Dragon Kin
by Evil Is Relative
Summary: Ysmir has completed all the prophesies for the Last Dragonborn. She's made many enemies along the way, but found the family she never thought to have. Now it seems that she might not be the Last Dragonborn after all, for she has found another in her daughter. Now Ysmir must fight those who would use her child for their own ends, and discover if Alduin truly was defeated.
1. Chapter 1: Lakeview Manor

She was the last of her kind, a dragon born in the body of a mortal; the first such since Tiber Septim himself. The Greybeards had dubbed her Ysmir, the "Dragon of the North," a name she still went by, forsaking the name she had been born with, along with her criminal past in Cyrodiil. Alduin the World Eater had called her the Last Dragonborn, as had the First Dragonborn, Miraak. She had completed the destiny foretold for the last of her kind.

So how the hell had her five-year-old just thu'umed her older brother into cleaning her room?

"Darva," she said cautiously, looking down at the tiny form perched on a barrel in the girls' room. "What did you just say?"

_ "Gol Hah,"_ she said happily, sucking contentedly on a stick that had, not very long ago, held a honey-nut treat. Her violet eyes were the mirror of her mother's, as were her cupid-bow's lips and short, straight little nose. Her hair came from her father. "If I say '_Gol Hah'_, Blaise starts doing whatever I want. He never does what I want when I say 'please,' so '_Gol Hah'_ is better."

Ysmir groaned, rubbing her eyes with her hand and turning the gesture into sweeping her long red hair off her face. It wasn't hard to resist the weak, untrained thu'um, even repeated several times, but this certainly wasn't something she was expecting to do today. "Darva, that is a dirty word. It is on your list of no-no words from this moment on."

The little girl's face fell, making her look heartrendingly pitiful inside a frame of perfect golden curls. "But it's fun."

"Go practice on the dummy with Runa," Ysmir said, using her "no-nonsense" voice. Darva pouted and hopped down, scampering off toward the latched door to the basement. "And don't run with a stick in your mouth!" Ysmir shouted after her. She sighed, watching her youngest (and only biological) child disappear into the main room with barely a hand raised in acknowledgement. After a moment, she shook her head and walked over to Blaise, bending down to peer into his face and gauge how bad it was. "Blaise," she said, "Blaise!" adding more force the second time and reaching out to shake his shoulder. "Ah, hag's tits. _Gol Hah_," she muttered, and the boy blinked owlishly up at her. Well, if he was going to be mind-controlled for a while, it might as well be to do something he was actually supposed to be doing. "Go do your own chores," she instructed, because she knew very well that he hadn't gotten around to them yet.

Blaise dropped the doll he had been holding and walked woodenly out the door. With a sigh, Ysmir sank onto Lucia's bed, scooping up the doll and smoothing the woolen hair back. One of Sofie's, it had a half-constructed dress on, pins still holding parts not yet sewn. Some of her own clothing looked a bit like that, thanks to the crafty girl and her penchant for leaving things half-constructed.

"Ysmir?"

She jumped, then smiled, rising to go out to the main room where Farkas was gazing about, tracking mud on her floor. She frowned down at his boots and he grinned sheepishly. "Sorry. I just saw Blaise go upstairs but he didn't talk to me or seem to see me. I think he might be getting sick or something."

"It's the latter," she sighed, and when he still looked confused, added. "The 'or something.'"

"House has gotten bigger," he remarked, coming over and giving her a hug redolent of man sweat and dog. Precious, the grouchy old wolf that had inexplicably followed Lucia home sniffed his backside and sneezed.

"Yeah, who says you can't have four towers on a house anyway?" she said facetiously, wrinkling her nose. "I don't know if he told you, but your brother helped me add a bathing room off the basement. I think you should visit, soon. But don't take your clothes off until you get there; the girls are downstairs."

Farkas stepped back and lifted his arm, sniffing an armpit. "Ah," he said, heading upstairs to the main bedroom to grab some clothes. Ysmir smiled and turned to the door, giving the other twin a wave.

Vilkas wasn't looking at her. His head was tilted back, eyes narrowed as he sniffed the air. "Sulfur," he noted.

"Could be either from when Runa was teaching Lydia how to cook, or from when Blaise and Alesan found my lock picks and got into the Alchemy lab. Hence, new tower. The old Alchemy lab is now unfit for anything but staying empty with the windows wide, wide open." She sauntered over, grinning as he finally took notice. Farkas was easy to lure into bed; Vilkas needed to be reminded that he had a libido sometimes, depending on what was on his mind. "You two were gone awhile."

"Bandit job," he said shortly, looking down at her with cool blue eyes. "There were more than twice as many as expected, and we had to form a plan."

One eyebrow raised, Ysmir echoed "'We'? Since when has Farkas helped with the planning?"

"He mostly hunted," said a smooth female voice. Ysmir glanced around Vilkas's unfairly broad shoulders and grinned at Aela, eeling around Vil to embrace the Huntress.

"It's been too long," she said, releasing the armor clad woman. Aela grinned and agreed. The pair were about as different as two women could be on the surface—mage and warrior, dragon and wolf—but where it counted they were alike as sisters. Both knew they would gladly lay down their life for the other, and that spoke more than any differences in temperament, occupation, or race. "Will you be staying?"

Aela thought for a moment. "For a night or two, if you have the room to spare."

"The Honorhall children aren't visiting any time soon," Ysmir assured her, leading them both further into the house. "Inigo is off teaching Ma'Rakha some wilderness survival skills; the bard (what was this last one's name?) quit; Sofie, Lucia, and Lydia went off to Riverwood to get some groceries; Runa and Honey-bee are in the basement; Alesan and Aventus are fishing in the lake; and Blaise…is doing his chores."

Aela and Vil ground to a halt, staring at her like she had just told them Alduin was in the apiary. "He's what?" Vilkas—ever the disciplinarian—demanded, sounding slightly stunned.

"I'll explain later, after the ears in the walls have gone to sleep," she promised.

Much later, after Runa and Darva had come up, the boys returned, Blaise woke up wondering what had happened, and Aela and the twins had "helped each other bathe," Ysmir poured herself a glass of Cyrodilic Brandy while the Companions wolfed down their beef stew and ale, reflecting that they probably hadn't had much but trail rations and whatever they caught as wolves for the last week. She sipped, reflecting on how much her life had changed since she had tried to sneak across the border into Skyrim. The girl that had left Cyrodiil, the mistrustful little teenager with an unnatural affinity for fire, had as good as died that day in Helgen. Something had responded under that black dragon's gaze, past terror and wonder. She had known that Alduin was her kin, somehow, and that this was why she had never been able to connect with people, why she loved fire, why she dreamed in a language not spoken by anyone she had ever met.

The Dragonborn was the ultimate dragon slayer, Delphine had told her. Delphine, as far as Ysmir was concerned, could go die in a fire. Preferably dragon fire. Killing rampaging dragons was one thing, but Paarthurnax? That craggily old dov was the closest thing Ysmir had to a grandfather, and the Greybeards were like her crotchety old uncles. He was far kinder to her than her supposed real "grandfather," the Thalmor bastard who had liked pretty Imperial maids and had used his little half-blood daughter and her strange, violet-eyed child with blood-red hair as his personal thieves and sabotagers. When she was not-quite fifteen, she quickly turned into an asset to be traded to a hideous old Imperial general as his wife in exchange for some treachery. Ysmir had been a widow before the night was out, presumed dead in the conflagration she left in her wake.

Ysmir closed her eyes, not letting the memories upset her. That was why she had come to Skyrim, after all, to the land of the mercenary that had tried to save her mother, and gotten them both killed for his efforts. She could have a fresh start here, she had thought, but she had never imagined the scope of what her life would become. Looking around at her friends, she reflected that she would have it no other way.

Her friendship with the Companions was an odd one. After deciding to stay in Whiterun for a while, Ysmir had apprenticed herself to Arcadia before finally going off to the College of Winterhold. She supposed she should go back there eventually, but that Ancano reminded her far too much of The Bastard for her comfort. It was while out on a task for the College she had found Skjor in werewolf form, injured and too faint from blood loss to move.

Ysmir had always had a bad habit of taking in strays.

Through Skjor, who was gone now, she had met Aela, his lover, and then the twins, who quickly became hers (Farkas first; Vilkas only joined them after some bottomless pit named Sam had challenged him to a drinking contest. Vil never spoke of what else had happened that night, only once letting slip something about a goat.). Not eager to marry anyone, ever, Ysmir happily shared her bed with both of them, as did Aela, who Ysmir secretly thought had never fully recovered from Skjor's death. At any rate, the twins were wonderful dual father figures to her clan of half the orphans in Skyrim, with Vilkas being the patient but foreboding disciplinarian, and Farkas basically another giant child to romp with. Aela would always watch the latter with a particularly avid look on her face, and shortly drag him off somewhere. Ysmir suspected the Huntress would have another little addition to the line of Shield Sisters in the next few years. In the meantime, she seemed to be cultivating Runa to one day join the Companions, and Runa was exceptionally fond of her Auntie Aela.

"So, Blaise," she said, pouring herself a second cup of brandy. The werewolves stopped shoveling her good cooking into their faces and looked up at her questioningly. Gravy leaked down Farkas's chin and she absently patted it off with a napkin as he swallowed, his mouth so full of food his cheeks looked like a chipmunk's. "He was mind-controlled this afternoon."

Vilkas scowled, his brow lowering in a way that promised vengeance on anyone who had the audacity to mess with one of the little omegas that had won their way into his heart. "Who? One of the mages looking for that alter we removed?"

"A vampire?" Aela guessed.

"A cultist?" Farkas put in.

"Worse," she told them, and saw them steel themselves. "Darva."

Puzzlement passed over Farkas's face, "Honey-bee? How did she mind-control anyone?"

Ysmir's shoulders slumped. "Do you remember two months ago when those bandits attacked and one of them held her hostage? I couldn't do anything with him using her as a shield so…when I was on Solstheim, Miraak used a Shout that could control the people's minds. I learned it to use on dragons, but this once…"

"You can control people?" Vilkas surmised.

Ysmir glowered at him. "Just because I can doesn't mean I do."

"The more pressing issue," Aela said, putting a hand on Vil's arm, "Is that now a five-year-old can bend minds, and that in order to do so, she must be—"

"Dragonborn," they all finished together, the others with wonder, Ysmir glumly.

"But you were the Last Dragonborn," Vil protested, getting right to the heart of the matter.

"Apparently not. Listen, I have to go to get to the bottom of this, even if I have to go talk to the Blades. Paarthurnax is not exactly easy to find at the moment, but I'll call him if I have to." Ysmir hesitated a long moment. "Aela, I left many of my more dangerous books in my home in Raven Rock, so that the children wouldn't get into them. I need to search them too. I know you wanted to meet the werewolf pack there, and I could use the backup, if you wouldn't mind accompanying me."

"Of course," the Huntress reassured her, concern in every line of her statuesque form.

"What about us?" Farkas asked after exchanging a glance with his brother. Ysmir sometimes wondered if they had some sort of mind-linking twin bond or something when they did that.

"I need you here at least until Lydia comes back," she told them, not allowing herself to think on why she wanted neither of them on the ash-strewn island where she had fought the First Dragonborn. For one thing, she was pretty sure they could smell deception. For another, she didn't want to think too closely about what she was going to do.

.

.

.

**Hello, everyone! Welcome to my first fanfiction. Please let me know what you think. Some things I wasn't able to fit in the description: this is rated M for mature themes, violence, and suggestiveness. Later, I go past being suggestive, but I do my best not to be explicit. If that makes anyone uncomfortable, just skip down to the next scene or chapter break, as I deliberately put such scenes at the end so that people can do just that. **


	2. Chapter 2: Return to Raven Rock

_ "Od Ah Viing!"_

Aela took her hands off her ears and glared at the Dragonborn. "I hate it when you do that."

Ysmir shrugged apologetically, gazing across the water at the manor where she had left Vilkas in charge until Lydia got home. Normally, she had no problem calling Odahviing from nearer the manor, but now she was wary of what Darva might pick up. "Do you think Farkas is interested in Lydia?"

Aela looked startled. "What? Why would you think that?"

"He was gazing off toward Riverwood with a flushed face."

Aela rolled her eyes. "Mages and their words. You could have just said he was blushing."

Ysmir grinned, "I could have, but what fun is that?"

The Huntress snorted, "Forget going back to Winterhold, you should go to Solitude and join the Bard's Collage."

_"I hear you I hear you the Dragonborn comes!"_ Ysmir warbled at the top of her lungs. Across the water, Precious started howling.

Aela winced, a dog-like whine escaping her compressed lips. "I take it back."

"Is that a new _zun_, a weapon, Dovahkiin?" the red dragon asked, hovering above them, wings sounding like the snapping sails of the biggest ship in existence. "_Yor strah wah nuft lovaas?_ A new way to use the Voice?"

Ysmir glanced at Aela, "Well, it does appear to inflict pain." She paused to cover her face as the massive dragon landed, gazing up fondly into his face. "I have a little problem, Odahviing, that I was hoping you had some advice for."

He cocked his head, his thoughtful exhalation breezing warmly over her face, mussing her hair. _"Kusah_. This is not what you normally call me for, Dovahkiin. _Fos eylok do diron?_ What sort of problem?"

"Before I tell you, I must warn that this must be kept secret for now," she said, eyes shadowed.

_"Do rahlo_. Secrets I have in abundance, Dovahkiin. It will be no _brudaht_ to keep yours," he assured her, lowering his head to gaze into her eyes. "Tell me your _diron_."

"My daughter used the Voice yesterday," Ysmir said, watching his eyes widen. "I am no longer the last Dragonborn. What does this mean, Odahviing? Was Alduin not defeated? Will she one day have to face him herself?"

_"Krosis," _he breathed, craning his massive head on his serpentine neck to look at the house. "I had not thought the little _kulaas _would inherit the soul of the _dov_. But she has used _rotmulaag?_ This is _zurun eldraag_, unexpected. It does not fit with the Prophesy, but fate can be…_motmahus."_

Ysmir snorted. "In my experience, fate is anything but elusive. In fact, it's downright pushy."

"What did it call Honey-bee?" Aela asked, gazing suspiciously at the mass of scales and muscle before her as if she itched to kill it.

"The dragons have their own name for Darva. _Kulaas,"_ Ysmir smiled. "Princess."

_"Vrah._ The Old One, he picked it. Some thought it _rem kriis_, pretentious for a human child. Perhaps he knew his kin when she was born."

Ysmir sighed. "It would not surprise me. If you see Paarthurnax, would you mind telling him that I might be calling? Not why, of course, but that I might have need of his wisdom."

A hot breath of air heralded Odahviing's chuckle. "I suspect, Dovahkiin, that once hearing that you wish to talk he may seek you out. The Old One enjoys _tinvaak_ with whoever will indulge him." Ysmir laughed aloud and Odahviing's jaw dropped in a smile wide enough to inhale her and not notice. "What now will you do, Dovahkiin? _Fos stig fen hi kuz?"_

Ysmir wrinkled her nose. "I'm off to Falkreath, where I can take a carriage to Windhelm, then a boat to Raven Rock."

_"Tol los rigirtiv, Dovahkiin_. You go south and west to go north and east. It will take many days. _Zu'u los kusahraal._ I will help you in your quest. Pack light, and I will take you and your _mungrohiik koriid_ to the island. It has been an age since I last saw it, though once I thought to call it home."

Well that was interesting. _"Nox hi, Odahviing."_

* * *

Aela was gazing around curiously, her nose twitching slightly as she took in the sights and smells of Raven Rock. "So many elves…" she murmured.

"Many refugees out of Morrowind settled here," Ysmir told her in an undertone, buying some essentials for the house as they passed through the market. She wondered what Aela would think of sujamma. She stopped and chatted a bit with a few of the people she knew before heading to Severin Manor. Aela's eyebrows shot up to her hairline as they entered and immediately went downstairs, but Ysmir was too keyed up to notice.

"Are you expecting to be attacked or something?" the Companion asked, picking up on her mood.

"No…I just…have to do something I rather wouldn't. Those books I told you about earlier? They aren't the kind of books you read," she fidgeted nervously as she sank onto the bed, drawing out a pair of enchanted gauntlets from the chest beside the bed and donning them. With a spell on them to increase her stamina and health, they made her feel just the teensiest bit better about what she was going to do.

Aela cocked a hip and placed her fist upon it. "What kind of books are they?" she demanded.

Ysmir let out an explosive breath, "They're portals to the Plane of Oblivion called Aprocrypha, the realm of hidden knowledge."

The other woman gaped at her for a moment, and then began to curse furiously. "Mages! Always muddling where you don't belong! Hermaeus Mora is a vicious Daedra, Ysmir! People go mad when they deal with him."

"I'm aware. That's why I keep the Books here, in that," she waved to the bookcase, then realized Aela would have no idea what she meant. Rising, she gestured the Huntress to join her at the shelf. "Help me, will you?" she asked. Struggling and grunting, the two women moved the heavily-laden shelves to the side, to reveal what looked like a section of badly repaired wall. To a thief, it would look as if the homeowner was trying to hide it, but Ysmir took out her dagger and slid it beneath one of the bricks, levering it out to reveal the mushroom-shaped button behind it.

She glanced at Aela, who frowned at the extensive secrecy. Ysmir reached in and slid her fingertips under the button, pulling up. If pressed, the button would reveal a hidden needle that would poison the presser. It had to be pulled. The bricks slid sideways, opening a tiny half-room no bigger than a cupboard, containing a large rectangular Dwemer chest. Ysmir had once tried and failed to break into this chest, so difficult was the lock. When she had found herself in possession of the Black Books, and realized their danger, she had gone back into the ruin and hauled the chest out with her, taking it to a locksmith and telling them that they could keep whatever they found inside so long as he did not damage the lock and made her a key.

He was as good as his reputation, and as bad. The night before the delivery of the chest, Ysmir had snuck into his house and read his journal, finding, not to her surprise, that he had planned on double-crossing her by selling her out to the Thalmor, who had a bounty on her. She had killed him, taken her chest and key, and burnt his shop to the ground. On the off-chance that any thieves that came to Severin Manor were better lock pickers than her, she had hid the chest. She doubted it though—she had enough loot deliberately placed that any thief would be too full-up by the time they got back here, even if they had extra pockets. Also, she was dammed good at picking locks.

Sliding the key in, she turned the lock home. The gears whirled and the domed lid slid back. The Books lay inside, all seven of them, with the Oghma Infinium filling out the second stack to make two even stacks of four books each. She shivered, glad her gauntlets had gloves. Then she drew out the first pile and pulled "Waking Dreams" from the bottom, carefully setting it aside and replacing the rest, locking the chest, and closing the wall. She didn't replace the shelf, in case she needed to put the Book back in a hurry.

"I'm going to sit on the bed and read this," she explained to Aela. "It won't be pretty, and I'll be tired and shaken when I come back out. I won't be able to defend myself like that."

"I understand," Aela replied, looking unhappy about all this. "Are you sure this is necessary?"

"Unfortunately, yes. Enough people wanted to prove that I wasn't Dragonborn that if there had been any doubt, they would have brought it up. Hermeaus Mora is the Prince of Forbidden Knowledge. If any record exists that might tell us if I'm not the Last Dragonborn, he would know it," the Dragonborn replied, going and sitting cross-legged on her bed. Normally, it was a rule with her that you took off your shoes before getting on a bed. Since that would mean walking barefoot in Aprocrypha, however, she made an exception. Taking a deep breath, she opened the Book.

A line of sickly green runes wrapped about her, quickly transforming into a thick black tentacle. Aela made a sound of disgust, jumping back. As her sense of reality dimmed, Ysmir heard her say, distantly, "Ugh! That can_not_ be good for you!"

"No," Ysmir thought, "It's not…"

* * *

She was back. The realm of Aprocrypha lurched and spun around her, islands of books and fibrous matter suspended above a black sea. Masses of writhing tentacles rose from the sea, descended from the sky, whipped at her from the stone-lined pool not ten feet from her. That was new; there hadn't been a pool there the last time she was here. The Prince of Forbidden Knowledge must be redecorating, but then this place was always changing. Making her way along the page-strewn paths, she paused when a flickering shadow caught her attention. _"Gol Hah Dov,"_ she breathed. The shifting, glittering smoke coalesced into a figure that once was a human, but all that was left of that were its arms. Clothed in rags, its head looked like a half-shriveled squid. It looked at her.

"Take me to your master," she commanded, and it turned, floating away from its eternal search for whatever bit of knowledge had brought it here as a human. She followed it through the ever-changing hallways and bridges of the island, halting in a small room that held nothing but a scrye. She touched the strange, glowing flower and it folded in on itself.

The door swung open silently, and the figure within looked up, "I never expected you to return to my realm, Dragonborn."

"Hello, Miraak."


	3. Chapter 3: At the Summit of Apocrypha

**Please see this version of Miraak's unmasked face, which is the one I use: Miraak the Dragonborn by Jowain92 on deviantart.  
**

_._

_._

_Six years ago…_

"And so the First Dragonborn meets the Last Dragonborn at the summit of Apocrypha," Miraak said, walking slowly toward her. Ysmir watched him warily, one hand on Sahrotaar's neck. "No doubt just as Hermaeus Mora intended. He is a fickle master, you know. But now I will be free of him. My time in Apocrypha is over. You are here in your full power, and thus subject to my full power. You will die, and with the power of your soul, I will return to Solstheim and be master of my own fate once again."

"Nice speech," Ysmir replied, heart pounding. The draw she always felt around dragons was so intensified around this other _dovah_ in human form. "We've met before, if you recall. You stole my dragon souls, you lazy bastard."

Miraak paused and laughed, sounding surprised. "Lazy? I have been plotting, planning, and preparing for longer than you can imagine. I've amassed followers, gained devotion—"

"Turned random citizens into your own private building crews, I know. With all that power, you'd think you'd be able to go out and win your own dammed dragon souls, without stooping to stealing mine," she huffed.

The First Dragonborn paused to consider her. "Is that all your angry about? Me stealing your prey?"

"Well, leaving Alduin to wreak havoc is also on the list."

"Felling Alduin was a mighty deed, and I thank you for it. He would have proved troublesome to me," Miraak said, circling her. His smooth voice had a tightness to it that put her on edge, and she was uncomfortably reminded of the many times she had slain a dragon and needed to pull her companion into the bushes. It was the main reason she only traveled with men she knew and trusted.

"Should have left him alive a bit longer, I guess," Ysmir growled, irked. "Perhaps you would have destroyed each other and saved me the trouble."

Miraak laughed, sending shivers down her spine, and not because she was afraid. "Sahrotaar, aloft," he commanded, and the dragon took off in a swirl of air that smelled of decay and old ink. "They wanted to use me to deal with Alduin—Hakon and the rest. I chose otherwise."

"I know," she replied, refusing to turn to face him as he circled behind her but keeping careful track of his steps, "Gormlaith told me, when _I_ went to Sovngarde to defeat him." That woman had quite a bit to say about Miraak, most of which Ysmir now wished she had kept to herself.

"Gormlaith…" the First Dragonborn said meditatively. "I remember her."

"And she _certainly _remembers you," she said before she thought, somewhat more emphatically than she might like.

"Does she?" he asked, a definite smirk in his voice, and Ysmir began to regret talking. She should have throttled down her need to speak with another Dragonborn and gone right to the killing. She was as bad as Paarthurnax.

She had forgotten to keep track of his footfalls. Ysmir suppressed a gasp as her enemy was suddenly just out of arm's reach, looking down at her. This close, she could see his eyes were two different colors; one a lovely sky blue, the other slitted and yellow, as if after so long his dragon soul had clawed its way out to change his flesh. The skin was dark around the eye, but she couldn't see more through the shadow of the mask. Instinctively, she turned to face him, fire enveloping her hands, flickering through her hair and over her shoulders, from behind her eyes as with no other mage she had ever met. Her own, personal version of a flame cloak. Vilkas had once told her she looked beautiful and terrifying at once when she was like this.

She couldn't know it, but Miraak agreed. "I had forgotten," he said around the tightness in his chest, the feeling of connection that had invaded what he thought was a hardened heart. "It's been so long since I met another Dovahkiin. I didn't anticipate this."

Puzzlement crossed her features—Miraak had always thought she was striking, but that expression was positively endearing, and it took him off-guard. _"Eh draaf,"_ he muttered, glancing away for a moment. He didn't want to kill her. She was the key to his regaining his own life, and he didn't want to kill her. Why? Because she was just like him, and so enticingly unlike him, and because he found her so very alluring. He doubted she knew, but most _dov_ were male. Females were born one to every eighteen or so males, and so were protected. It was one of the _dov's_ greatest secrets, for it could be used against them so easily. And so here he was, a man with a dragon's soul, struggling with the fierce urge to protect a female _dovah_, and the instinct to produce more _dov._

Well, couldn't have that ruining his plans.

_"Fo Krah Diin!"_ he Shouted, and she cried out at the sudden icy assault. He had expected to extinguish her fire, but she flared up and dove at him with a yell of pure fury, a dragon in a terrifyingly weak body, her flaming hands curled into claws. He drew his sword and slashed at her, but she wiggled out of the way like a ferret, exposing a flash of skin along her thigh where something had rent her clothing.

Ysmir ducked under the creepy blade and shot fire at the First Dragonborn from both hands, her face a snarl. Fire bloomed off him as he staggered back, taken aback by the sheer force of the assault. "I didn't get this old by being stupid, Dragonborn," he mocked. "Dragon fire has no effect on me, and spells are blunted."

"I didn't become one of the best Enchanters in Skyrim by not learning how to see enchantments!" she shot back, and Miraak was momentarily struck dumb as part of his glove crumbled to ash, just one single part, but the buffering effect stopped as the magic seeped out into the stagnant air. She shook her hand and lightning crackled between her fingers, giving Miraak just enough warning to enact a ward before using a Shout to put distance between them.

"You are strong. Stronger than I believed possible. You could have been mighty, if fate had not decreed otherwise," he said, not letting his regret color his words.

_"Wuld Nah Kest!"_ she retorted, bringing her within a few paces of him. _"Zun Haal Viik!"_

Miraak gripped his sword tighter as the force of her Shout nearly forced him to lose it. _"Ven Gar Nos!"_ he Shouted back, using the opportunity to back away and draw his staff. Aiming it at the ground beneath her feet, he used almost a quarter of the magic within to create a mass of writhing, venomous tentacles that wrapped themselves around her as she cried out in dismay. With so many, there was no way she could escape them. She lurched away from the center, but the mass was too large. Ysmir staggered and fell to her knees. Miraak's hands curled into fists as he resisted the urge of the _dovah _inside to save her. Flame blossomed around her, momentarily withering the tentacles, and she used the moment of respite to do the last thing he expected.

Ysmir looked straight down, and Shouted. _"Fus Ro Dah!"_

The young woman went sailing upward, where Sahrotaar, still under her will, caught her, landing as golden light arched and danced around the claw he held her with. Miraak glared. _"Sahrotaar, zii los dii du!"_

The dragon screamed as his betrayal brought the only possible end, and his flesh withered on his bones as his soul went to nourish Miraak. Within the circle of bones, Ysmir shakily got to her feet, flames once again dancing over her form. Her clothes were starting to look a bit charred around the edges. "You'd kill your own ally?" she asked, voice shaking with rage.

"As assuredly as I'd kill yours," he told her, shooting more tentacles at her feet.

_"Wuld!"_ she cried quickly, bringing herself closer to him like an approaching comet. She finally drew the sword that had been sheathed across her back, a thin, slightly curving blade that filled him with a curious foreboding. Suddenly he realized why she'd waited to wield it—it was made for the slaying of dragons. Just carrying it must have rubbed raw against her soul. With a yell she cast herself at him again, the sword dancing in her grip as if she had Shouted for the fury of the elements to assist her.

Another enchantment fell as she sliced it off his boot. A slow smile crossed her face, and this time he could neither avoid nor dampen her fire when it hit him. He gasped _"Feim Zii Gron,"_ and raced for the center, holding his side where she had burned him. He cursed; he hadn't counted on her being a Master Level fire mage either. "_Kruziikrel, zii los dii du!"_ Kruziikrel fell from the sky as his soul was ripped from him, and Miraak sighed as his wounds closed, as his strength returned.

"Quit doing that!" the enraged female shrieked, her sword passing through his ethereal form.

"I will win this fight, Dragonborn," he told her coldly, "I must have your soul to escape this place. Your soul or one other's, and he I cannot touch."

"You think you're the only one who knows what it's like to need to escape? To be trapped somewhere?" she demanded, her eyes blazing so bright her whites were gone. Violet fire flickered over her eyebrows and into her hairline, and Miraak wondered (irrelevantly) if someone had somehow bedded a Flame Atronach somewhere in her ancestry. "You're not!"

Ysmir focused on that, the old fears, the need to escape her childhood home. It was what fueled her fire, made her burn so hot. Tears welled in her eyes and evaporated before they coursed down her cheeks, and she spat spiteful vindictive at Miraak. It didn't matter how much of her past she was shouting out at the man; he would very shortly be dead anyway.

Miraak was solid again.

He leapt backward, bringing his own blade up to block hers, his face behind his mask a rictus of rage. "I'm going to kill all those dammed yellow elves," he growled, and shock froze her long enough for him to catch her blade with his and spiral it away, skittering over the side of the Summit. "How dare they treat a _dovahkiin_ with anything less than respect? I'll see them _crawl."_

"By the Nine, we agree on something," Ysmir muttered, summoning a bound sword in one hand and a Dremora Lord with another.

"A challenger is near!" the hulking, red-laced Daedra cried.

Miraak stared for a moment. "Well, they haven't changed," he said, so low Ysmir thought she couldn't have heard him right. Miraak having a sense of humor went counter to her world-view.

"I honor my Lady by destroying you!" the Daedra declared boldly.

Annoyed, Miraak surrounded it in tentacles and watched it die within moments. "I hate those things," he muttered, then remembered the girl. Turning proved she was almost on him, and the magic blade cut so close it sliced his clothing and left a shallow line of stinging venom across his chest. Gripping the cloth with her other hand, she ripped a good portion of his robes off his shoulders, burning his chest with her fire. The cloth covering his shoulder and right arm turned to ash in an instant, and taking a decent amount of his skin with it. He yelled in pain, becoming ethereal once again and sacrificing the last of his dragon thralls. There would be no more chances; he had to kill her quickly.

Ysmir had nearly reached him when he became tangible once more, and his Cyclone hit her just after she managed the first word of Unrelenting Force. It hit Miraak in the side of the head, knocking his mask askew and sending him sprawling out of the black pool. For a few crucial moments, he saw stars.

The Last Dragonborn saw her chance. Racing up, she drew her dagger, skidded to her knees next to Miraak and…stopped.

Half his face displayed strong, finely hewn features, with full lips and high cheekbones. The other half was covered in the green-brown scales of a dragon. A single blond braid partially obscured it, and without thinking she brushed it away to see better the effects of a dragon's soul after countless years. The eyes snapped open and a hand shot up to grasp her wrist. One was blue, the other a dragon's eye, as she had thought. The feeling of his bare skin on her arm sent a surge of sensation through her, similar to and stronger than when the euphoria of taking a dragon's soul faded. For a moment he glared up into her startled face, and she couldn't move to save her life.

Then he darted forward and kissed her.

Ysmir had been kissed by many men, more than she really cared to admit, especially since she had started fighting dragons. Nord men like strong women, so it apparently came with the job. But nothing in her experience had prepared her for this. She felt as if Miraak was trying to devour her soul through the carnal touch of his lips upon hers, and found herself reciprocating with a ferocity that shocked her. Clothes went flying, torn off in their haste to touch, to taste, to…she wasn't entirely sure what they were trying to do. They might even have been still fighting, trying to dominate one another as they rolled and clashed together. Then, abruptly, he was on top of her with the most determined expression she had ever seen, and with a single thrust he invaded her. She gasped, nails digging into his arms as they ceased their battle and began to move as one. Ysmir reached up and grasped his hair, pulling his head down until she could reach his lips, wrapping her arms around him.

Miraak was lost, and he was pretty sure the woman in his arms was too. Her warmth surrounded him, filled him as he filled her, and he almost hated himself for a moment. But when she kissed him…thought fled and the souls of the only two _dovahkiin_ in the world met and soared together.

* * *

Miraak stooped and lifted his mask from where it had landed, darting a glance at the girl as he fitted it over his face. The sleeves were gone from her mage robes, and she had sliced the hood to use as a wrap to cover her chest. She looked very fetching like that, mostly naked and covered in soot. Her face was as red as her hair.

"Uh," she halted, glancing at him shyly. That was strange; he hadn't pegged her for shyness. "Have you seen my other boot?"

He could see it, on the other side of the pool from her, obscured from her vision by the rim. A few strides brought him to it, and he tossed it to her wordlessly.

"Thanks," she said, staring at the expressionless mask. Miraak sighed and removed it. The mask was the face of her enemy, the one beneath that of her lover. It was not a position either had found themselves in before. He watched her as she sat on the rim of the pool to pull the boot on. "So…what now?" she finally asked, staring at the ground as she scuffed it with her boot.

Miraak stared at her helplessly, uncertain. "I don't know," he finally admitted. "I could still kill you, but it would leave a bad taste in my mouth." With that comforting statement he sank beside her on the pool's rim, gazing out over Apocrypha. "I will still be trapped here," the look in his eyes just then made her think that the thought was bad enough that he might just get over his hesitation.

"There has to be some other way to get you out!" she said, and he looked at her in completely dumbfounded amazement at the thought that she would _offer _to help him. "I mean, provided you don't decide to become an evil overlord again, then we'd be right back where we started, only in Nirn, rather than Oblivion." She finally turned to see his expression. "What?"

"Why would you help me?" he asked, wondering if she had cracked her head on the ground earlier.

Her face slowly turned red again, starting with her cheeks and moving outward. "Good question," she replied, glancing away. "But…it's not fair that you're stuck here."

A small smile, the first she had seen, curved his lips. "I will leave someday, Dragonborn, rest assured," he said, his usual arrogance returning.

She shook her head, a small smile playing across her features, "Call me Ysmir."

The small splash was all the warning they had. A huge tentacle burst out of the pool behind them and impaled Miraak through the chest, lifting the stunned man high in the air. Ysmir screamed and scuttled backward hastily, gazing up in horror.

"Did you think to escape me, Miraak? You can hide nothing from me here. No matter. I have found a new Dragonborn to serve me," Hermaeus Mora declared, hovering as a grotesque mass of eyes and tentacles above them.

"No!" Ysmir screamed, frantically throwing a healing spell at the First Dragonborn. A second tentacle rose from the pool and knocked her aside.

Miraak tasted blood. Spitting it out, he drew a shallow breath and murmured something too faint for Ysmir to hear over the ringing in her ears. He began to glow as his clothing incinerated. Tears blurred before her eyes and Apocrypha lurched around them, sloshing the liquid and knocking her over. Miraak dropped, naked, his skin gone in some places as he fought the incineration. He grasped the wound in his chest and Spoke.

Ysmir fell out of Apocrypha with a scream.

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**Eee! I was so nervous about posting this chapter. I hope you will all tell me what you think (like any writer, I live off feedback), and especially what you liked or didn't like. Oh, also, do let me know if there is a character you would like to have mentioned or interacted with. Special thanks to A. D. Spinner , CreationUnleashed, and springkerl for reviewing!**


	4. Chapter 4: Knowledge and Fate

Miraak rose, setting aside whatever it was he had been writing. The mask was as expressionless as ever, and she wondered why he wore it when he was alone. "I love what you've done with the place," she said, going for nonchalance as she leaned against the inside of the door. The eyes narrowed behind the mask and a single hand waved, once. The door shut, shoving her into the room.

He was very close within a matter of seconds. Ysmir's heart started to pound, and not just because she wondered if he had made up his mind about killing her. For a long moment he just stared down at her, eyes glinting in the darkness of his mask. She wondered what he would do if she reached up and removed it. Perhaps it was best not to find out, but of course she did it anyway, because sense apparently flew out the window with Miraak.

His face was just as she remembered it, expressionless but for a slight crease between his brows and the fury of thoughts whirling behind his eyes. Finally, he voiced one. "Why are you here? I all but told you I would kill you if you returned, and I have had five more years in Apocrypha to motivate me."

Ysmir watched his lips as he spoke. Damn the man anyway. What did a man need with such perfect lips? "I needed to come here even if it were Hermaeus Mora who was still in charge," she told him, unable to keep the quaver from her voice. "I thought he might not be."

A corner of the lips quirked up. "And why would you think that?"

"Your last words. I finally sorted them out. _'Zii los dii du, Hermaeus Mora.' _His was the other soul that could fuel your return. You made a point of saying that the other soul could not be touched, but when he stabbed you…" she trailed off, eyes darkening as the image of him suspended in the air flashed through her mind. She shouldn't care, she knew she shouldn't, but it still affected her.

"And yet I am still here," he pointed out, lifting one arm to indicate the shifting walls of the Oblivion Realm of Knowledge.

She smiled, "Two years ago I met Sheogorath. Do you know what he told me? He told me he was my ancestor. Gave me a long story to go with it, and a lot of cheese. I thought it was just madness, but then I started looking into it. It might be madness, but there is a good chance that it's true." She gazed back up into his eyes, which still whirled. "I thought that if one mortal can become a Daedric Prince, why not two? It's not as if you didn't have experience running Apocrypha already."

"Clever," he breathed, leaning closer, "So very clever…"

His lips touched hers with all the thrill she remembered, and she molded against him as she had done so many times in dreams she wouldn't admit to having. Then one of Sofie's pins dug into her breast and she gasped, jumping back. "Right. Job to do," she said, pulling out the pin with a wince. Part of the hem unfolded where it hadn't been completely mended, but for once she was grateful to her adopted daughter's forgetfulness.

Miraak looked as breathless as she felt. "What brought you back to Apocrypha?" he asked, for he knew the answer would never be him.

Ysmir pursed her lips in thought, not knowing how much she wanted to reveal. "Miraak, in all your reading, did you ever think that I might not be the Last Dragonborn?"

He scoffed, straightening clothes she didn't remember tugging at and going back to his desk. "Ridiculous. Why would you even ask?"

"I…Let's suppose I met someone who could Shout…"

"The Greybeards can Shout. No one ever accused them of being Dragonborn," he retorted, sounding scornful.

"This person picked up the Shout after hearing it once, just like I did Dragonrend," she said, shifting uncomfortably as she pressed her thighs together, then stopping when she realized what she was doing.

Miraak realized it too, and the lavishious smile that spread across his features had the dual effect of making her want go sit in his lap and purr like a Khajiit, or whack him over the head with the Wabbajack before turning him into a mudcrab. She scowled, "Well? I'm pretty sure this person is Dragonborn."

"It is still impossible," the new Daedric Prince of Knowledge assured her, leaning back in his chair and putting his feet up on the desk. "You probably just met a particularly talented Tongue. All Tongues can learn to use the Voice, albeit crudely and after years of study. Even your Ulfric Stormcloak managed to figure it out."

Ysmir snorted, "Ulfric is not 'my' anything," she muttered. "He's just a pawn in the Thalmor's game to weaken the Empire."

"And wouldn't it be interesting to watch him discover _that_?" Miraak enthused. Ysmir had the shrewd notion that Ulfric _would _be finding out that little fact, probably publically and at a very sensitive moment. "Anyway, I would not be too quick to assume this person is Dragonborn. Even if they are, all you need to do to remain the Last Dragonborn is outlive them."

"I'm…older," she admitted.

Miraak shrugged, "So ensure it. Kill them."

Ysmir froze. Of course Miraak would suggest that. "I can't."

A cold smile crossed the handsome, transformed face, "I can. Where is this person?" At her stubborn look, the flames that flickered momentarily over hands curled into fists, he knew he had gotten to her. "I can go looking if you won't tell me. I discover everything, eventually, and I have all of Hermaeus Mora's followers as well as my cultists just waiting for an order…"

"Miraak, if you touch her, I'll make you wish that tentacle had killed you," she promised.

The infuriating smile widened. "Oh, a her is it? That narrows down the search by half—"

"It's our daughter!" Ysmir burst out, all unwilling.

The smile vanished as Miraak sat up, the chair thumping to the floor. "What?"

"The newest Dragonborn is our daughter," she repeated, not able to look at him. Somehow, she felt guilty having kept this from him, when she had been able to return at any time to see if he had survived. But what kind of life would that have been for Darva? She would cheerfully slaughter everyone in Skyrim if it meant keeping her little girl out of Apocrypha.

"That's not possible," he said flatly, and she jerked her gaze back to his face, which had gone cold as granite. He might as well have been wearing his mask.

"That's what I said, for about two months. Then it started to show…I supposed Apocrypha, or the fight, damaged some of the enchantments I had keeping me from getting pregnant. That" she added dryly, "or it's your _dovah_ virility coming through."

"No," he said, shaking his head so hard his braid went flying around like a whip. "It cannot be."

Ysmir put her hands on her hips. "It's true. She has your hair, your cheekbones, and she thinks she's never wrong."

Miraak shook out of his mental paralysis long enough to give her an ironic look, which she ignored.

"Besides," she added, "I was in and out of Apocrypha so much that I didn't…dally as much as I could have. And the one other man I slept with was not a blond Nord."

Miraak seemed a bit disgusted. "You slept with an elf, didn't you?"

"I'm part elf, egomaniac," she shot back, then spread her arms wide, "Product of the united Empire, right here!" Although, if one wanted to be truly honest, she was the product of Aldmeri depravity…

The First Dragonborn shook his head, returning to his thoughts. She let him, going over to see what books were on his shelf, although given the four or five that flew off the shelves and into the stacks of the wall, they were not personal choices.

"What's her name?" he finally asked. She turned to gaze down at him, unsure, and he scowled, "I have a right to know."

"Darva," she supplied.

The scowl only deepened, "You named her after an insect?"

Ysmir scowled right back. "I didn't know what to name her for a long time. I didn't even keep my own name, for Talos's sake!"

"So what, she got stung and you decided it was fate?" he asked scathingly.

"She wouldn't eat," Ysmir admitted, not letting the myriad of hopeless feelings, of the horrible thought that she had failed as a mother somehow before she even began, crowd in to flavor her tone. "A friend suggested we add honey to the milk. It worked."

Miraak didn't reply, his mind echoing with a faint, ancient memory of his own mother telling him how he had done much the same thing. The scowl was back. "What Shout?" he asked instead of voicing his thoughts.

Again she hesitated, and he glared at her, "Bend Will," she finally admitted.

She was alarmed when he actually smiled, "Really? She takes after me, then?"

"Do not get too excited. There is no way I would ever bring her here," Ysmir said, flames lifting her hair from her shoulders.

"I would not expect you to," he said, a hint of sadness in his voice. He suppressed it swiftly. "Who did she use it on? You?" That would be amusing.

"Her brother," the Dovahkiin replied.

Miraak's stomach tightened uncomfortably, "You have another child?"

"Adoptive brother," she corrected him. "I have six of them, altogether."

He laughed, "How do you manage?"

"Very well, thank you," she replied stiffly. Of course, she had help in the form of Lydia and Inigo, and the twins were around much of the time. "Miraak, I don't think you're seeing what the problem is," she began, but he interrupted her.

"The problem? Besides discovering I've had a daughter for almost six years?" he asked acidly, rising to come stand before her menacingly. "What would you have me think about, after discovering this?"

Ysmir swallowed, trying not to be obvious about it, and pressed herself back against the bookcase. Too close; he was far too close. Her fight or flight response kicked in and began to argue with the parts of her that wanted nothing more than for him to fill that five-inch gap between them. "If I'm the Last Dragonborn, what does that mean for our daughter?"

His eyes softened slightly as he thought. "I see your point. I'll look into it, and set the Seekers to it as well. If there is an answer to be found here, we will find it."

She felt the incredible burden of worry ease so much she sagged, finding herself near tears. "Thank you," she breathed, and an expression of sympathy crossed his features while her eyes were closed.

"Now," he said, because he could not just let her go, "You've been gone for the better part of a decade, Dragonborn."

Pure annoyance filled her expression as she looked up at him, "I only suspected that you were alive, and if you were there was still a better than even chance that you'd want to kill me."

"I don't want to kill you. I might, but it's not what I want," he replied, and at her questioning look, smiled. "Here," he murmured, moving closer, "Let me show you what I want…"

* * *

Ysmir woke in her bed in Severin Manor no longer sitting up, but laid out neatly on the bed, the Book laying open on her chest, with no tentacles in sight, thank the Divines. Aela was seated cross-legged on a chair a few feet away, head on her hand and a wistful look on her face. "I don't know who you visited in that Book, but I wish you had shared," was the first thing she said.

She blushed, sitting up gingerly. "I wasn't expecting…" In all honesty, she had suspected her theory of Miraak's survival was wishful thinking, and that she would have to bargain with the Wretched Abyss to get what she wanted. Now she wasn't sure what to think.

"So who is he? I should warn you that the twins will be jealous. They don't mind sharing their women with each other, and sometimes with other friends, but they have a thing about men they haven't met." The Huntress stretched her long legs out before her, toying with the dagger she carried. Her bow was beside her on the chest, arrows beside it, ready to defend in case of intruders.

The Dragonborn sighed. There was no point in keeping this from Aela; she was intelligent, and would figure it out on her own. Worse, she would share what she surmised. "Honey-bee's father."

Aela started so badly she cut herself, "Wait, he's in Apocrypha?"

"It's Miraak," Ysmir confessed, stretching out her arms so that her joints popped.

"The man who sent cultists after you?" she exploded. The dagger flew out of her hand and impaled itself in the chest of the mannequin wearing cultist's garb.

"The only cultists who come after me now are the ones in Skyrim with old orders. He's sort of left them to their own devices since he…well, absorbed Hermeaus Mora and became a Daedric Prince."

She had never seen Aela do so credible an imitation of a salmon, her mouth opening and closing soundlessly. "But…Apocrypha? I saw you, here, while your mind was there. You were _not_ _physically there_. How?"

She shrugged, "The last time I was there I went in my full power; body and mind. Miraak wouldn't get anything out of killing me, otherwise. Then…well, he couldn't." It would be more accurate to say that he decided he didn't want to, but Ysmir did not want to share that. "Is it strange that I sometimes missed him? I was used to seeing him, the omnipresent enemy that became…I'm not entirely sure what he became. There's a…pull between us: a bond of two of a kind, stronger than what I feel to dragons, even when I have to slay them and absorb their souls. I really don't know what to think of him anymore, other than I do not think I could bring myself to kill him, now. We're certainly not friends, and I'm not sure love comes into it either, but neither sees the other as an enemy."

"So you're letting a mass of Book-born tentacles rip your mind from your body to have hate sex with an ancient man that just became a Daedric Prince?" Aela summed up incredulously.

"It's far more complicated than that. He rules Apocrypha now, and that is one of the few places that might have answers about Honey-bee. And he looks anything but ancient," Ysmir hastened to assure her, swinging her legs over the bed and heading down the hall. Stupid Morrowind architecture placed the kitchen upstairs.

"Comforting. At least you know Dragonborn age well. You never see a rendering of Tiber Septim as anything other than grand," Aela joked acidly, letting Ysmir know that there was a lot going left unsaid. Aela only joked like this when she was unsure of the reception of what she wanted to say.

"Apparently we age dragon," Ysmir replied, grabbing a loaf of bread, sticking a hunk of cheese on it and taking a bite. "Half his face is taking on a dragon aspect."

Aela finally came to a decision. "I don't think you ought to talk to him again. I think you should stay away from those Books."

"I have. I would have left them in there for eternity were it not for Darva suddenly taking after, well, both of us. The fact that she used the Bend Will Shout first worries me," she admitted, taking a long drink of sujamma right from the bottle. "I would have felt a lot better if it had been something like Animal Allegiance. There's so much temptation attached to that Shout, and I'm not sure a five-year-old would bother to fight it."

Aela patted her hand comfortingly, her face full of sympathy. "We'll just have to teach her that she needs to. She's a good girl; perhaps if you teach her some of the other Shouts she'll forget about this one."

"I doubt it, but I suppose she'll have to learn sometime. I want to wait until she's a little older, though. I'd hate doing it, but if worse comes to worse I can use Bend Will on her to make her forget she ever heard the Shout."

The Huntress grimaced with the same distaste Ysmir felt, but what was one memory of a child compared to the hundreds she might subvert if she followed in her father's footsteps? The women sat in silence for a long while, each pondering just this thought. It was Aela that finally broke the quiet. "It's almost midnight. I'll pack some travel kits and we can set out to visit the Frostmoon Pack in the morning."

"They weren't too friendly last time I met them," Ysmir warned.

Aela bent and kissed the top of her head. "That, my dear, is because you are a dragon, not a wolf."

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**Hello, everybody! I updated a bit early today, because I'm having issues with my computer. Just a bit of a heads up in case I don't post on time next week. In other news, I have Darva and Ysmir drawn up, so I should have pictures of them up on my Deviantart in the next few weeks. **

**A. D. Spinner, I beg forgiveness for having two cliffies in a row! I don't actually write in chapters, I partition things off afterwards by section and word count. **

**CreationUnleashed, I'm afraid that wasn't my idea, but the artist that created the version of Miraak that I used. Check it out if you haven't yet! Miraak the Dragonborn by Jowain92 on Deviantart. I would just put a link, but they get all garbled in the editor. It's the first thing that comes up when you Google it, though. **

**Anyway, please let me know what you think!**


	5. Chapter 5: School Reunion

Their journey from Solstheim was much different from their voyage there. This time they took the _Northern Maiden_ from Raven Rock to Windhelm, and Ysmir and Aela discovered, much to their dismay, that The Huntress and boats did not mix well. Ysmir spent most of the voyage below decks with Aela, working on a Restoration spell that negated motion sickness, with some success. When they finally entered the river that would lead them to the docks at Windhelm, however, Aela opted to jump off the ship and swim to land rather than remain aboard a few more hours. Ysmir had brought some water-sensitive material back, and told her she'd meet her at the Windhelm stables.

The Nord woman was looking much more like her usual self when Ysmir finally caught up with her, after hiring a courier to tell Lydia that she was back in Skyrim, and would be heading to the College of Winterhold before going south. Aela groaned to learn they were going to consort with a group of mages, but cheered up considerably when she learned that she probably wouldn't be allowed inside the walls of the College, and should just remain in the inn, where she could get a few bounties from the innkeeper to work off her boredom and earn money for the Companions.

The journey from Windhelm to Winterhold was fairly uneventful, save for some mudcrabs, some trolls, a couple of frostbite spiders, and the ever-present bandits. Oh, and a few necromancers and some vampires impersonating Vigilants of Stendarr. Uneventful for her, she supposed. No dragons attacked, anyway. At least they were spared being hounded by wolves, as the creatures left Aela alone the moment they smelled her.

"Isn't this wonderful, Ysmir?" Aela enthused. "The fresh air, the bracing Skyrim breeze, the blue sky above us and the glory of the hunt!"

"Yes, delightful," Ysmir replied, flicking her hands to try to fling some of the spider goop off her arms. She never should have introduced The Huntress to exploding arrows.

Winterhold looked as wretched as it always did, Ysmir reflected scornfully. In her opinion, the hold held too dearly to the past, bemoaning the Great Collapse and blaming the College for all their woes rather than rebuilding their hold. They could be great again, if they cared to even try to repair the damaged houses and bring in more citizens. She knew how she would do it; there were plenty of farmers and other honest citizens homeless from dragon attacks and the war. Enough to swell Winterhold to at least half its former size. Instead, they wailed against the mages and let their city rot around them. Pitiful.

Aela stopped to examine the College, hands on her hips and head tilted to the side. Ysmir didn't see how she wasn't freezing in her ancient Nordic armor, for the wind whipped their hair around their shoulders and drove snow into every inch of clothing. "Impressive," The Huntress finally said, "I'll see you in four days," she added, heading into the inn.

Ysmir sighed, facing the College and straightening her shoulders. Plenty of others had attained their Mastery and left, as she had, but she was still uncertain of her welcome, as she had left without a word after a rather embarrassing incident.

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* * *

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_Nine years ago…_

A knock on the door startled her, and she yelled for Lydia to answer it. She was almost finished with this potion…

"My Thane?" Lydia poked her head in the Alchemy Lab, face uncertain, "There are a couple of men here to see you."

"What's wrong with them?" Ysmir asked absently, in response to the housecarl's confliction.

"They asked if this was a school for mages," she replied, and Ysmir laughed at the thought. "I'll be down in a moment," she said, waiting for the final drops to drip out of the alembic. "Give them some mead in the meantime."

Some minutes later, she entered the main hall, wiping her hands on a rag, only to stop in surprise when she saw who awaited her: J'zargo and Onmund, looking extraordinarily miserable. "What in the name of Julianos are you two doing here?" she burst out, unable to fathom what had brought them to her home in Falkreath, on the other end of Skyrim.

The two Apprentices glanced at each other, and finally Onmund came forward. "We…we know why you left the College," he said in a rush.

Ysmir lifted an eyebrow, "Do you now?"

"Yes, and we wanted you to know that it's our fault. Ancano…he was being such a…well, you know. So when one of Brelyna's attempts at Alchemy made something that was like an extremely potent wine, we slipped it to him. Whatever he did or said to you, it was because he was so drunk he was out of his mind. He doesn't even remember what he did."

She stared at them for a moment before bursting out laughing. "Is _that_ why that moron kissed me? I thought he was drunk, but I really couldn't picture him letting himself get to that state."

The poor Nord boy paled in dismay; "He _kissed_ you?"

Ysmir snorted. "He did a lot more than that—he called me an Altmer name and put on an Amulet of Mara. The only reason he isn't dead now is because I didn't want the Thalmor to blame the Arch Mage." Actually, he had called her by the family name of her Thalmor grandfather, having apparently found traces of that family in her features, in her magic. She had almost killed him in fright that he would contact The Bastard and have her sent home again. Only the realization that he had just, in his drunken state, gotten over his prejudice enough to make the connection had stayed her hand. That was why she had left the College; fear that he would remember, or make the connection again. Her grandfather's family was an important one—she was never even able to comprehend how important until she left. Even marriage to a mixed-raced bastard of that family would bring connections any of the Dominion would find advantageous.

"J'zargo would not mind taking the blame, this once," the Khajiit growled, much to her surprise.

She smiled at him fondly, "I appreciate the offer, J'zargo, but that's not the only reason I left the College. Surely you noticed that my old room is empty? I attained my Mastery, and they moved me to the Hall of Countenance. Also…" she trailed off, wondering what all to tell them. "I have…a destiny I have to fulfill."

"What do you mean?" Onmund asked, perplexed and worried.

"It's not something I want the rest of the College to know, for various reasons," she said, heading outside. "You know I only came to Skyrim a year ago, but it's been a rather hectic year. You see, I found out that I'm…not quite as ordinary as I thought."

"I never thought you were ordinary," the Nord burst out, and Ysmir decided his little crush on her was getting too strong—another reason not to go back.

"I thought you were," J'zargo admitted. "You were not competitive at all."

Ysmir laughed. "J'zargo, you are about to get jealous," she teased, turned toward a pile of hay she had stacked up as being too rotten for thatch, and Shouted _"Yol Toor Shul!"_ Predictably, the pile went up with an impressive explosion of flame; Ysmir was rather proud of herself, for Paarthurnax had only just taught her the final word of that Shout.

The wide eyes of the two Apprentices were all she could have wished. "So, you see, I'm going to be a little too busy for school."

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* * *

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She had expected to meet Faralda at the gate, and she wasn't disappointed. "Cross the bridge at your own peril! The way is dangerous and the gate will not open. You shall not gain entry!"

"You're still toting that line?" Ysmir asked with a smile, throwing her hood back.

The Altmer—one of the few of that race that Ysmir did not actively dislike—blinked in surprise. "So you return to us, Noyoki," she replied.

Ysmir shook her head. "I no longer go by that name, Faralda. I have found one of my own."

The elven woman smiled slightly; she was among the few that knew "Noyoki" was what an Altmer put on a form to hold the place of a name when one could not be found. There were many elven gravestones with the term "Noyoki" emblazoned upon them. Ysmir had told Faralda—and, eventually, Ancano, who's attention had been pricked at the familiar, if somewhat morbid, Aldmeri word—that it was the name given to her by the Thalmor woman that had run the orphanage she had grown in. She had stuck to that lie ever since, as it seemed to work fairly well.

The woman stepped aside and let the Dragonborn enter. The walkway was as perilous as Ysmir remembered, and she wondered absently if the Arch Mage left it like that on purpose to weed out the cowardly before they even entered the College proper.

"What name have you chosen for yourself, then?" the mage asked, falling slightly behind her as they traversed the most crumbled part of the walkway.

"Ysmir," she replied with a smile, looking back as they stepped upon a more stable section.

Faralda looked nonplussed. "That is a strange title to take for yourself, especially surrounded by Nords who might take offense."

"I did not take it for myself; I was finally adopted," she replied with a laugh. "It took me seventeen years, but I finally gained a family and a name."

"Perhaps it is appropriate, given your talent with fire," the older woman finally said, with a small smile.

"They certainly thought so," Ysmir replied, "Although that is not the reason they Named me thus. So what has happened since I have been away?"

The Altmer sighed as the conversation went back to what was, for her, solid footing. "We finally found a way to bring the Artifact from Sarthaal to the Collage safely, although not everyone is happy with that. We have been studying it, and come up with very little information, despite the seven years we have been searching. Urag says it is the Eye of Magnus, but other than that we know almost nothing about it."

"And Ancano? He seemed fairly interested in it; surely he has written to his colleagues and gotten something to share." Really, she doubted the Thalmor agent would share anything he knew unless under duress, but what she truly wanted to know was if he was still at the college.

Evidently Faralda shared that opinion. "That man wouldn't spit on you if you were on fire," she said scornfully.

"He might, if you were already a corpse. Just out of spite, mind," Ysmir said. "Does he remember what happened the night I left? He seemed fairly inebriated at the time."

Faralda looked worried, "What with everything else that was going on, I wasn't sure that was when you left. He didn't threaten you, did he? I know he has never seen your entry into the College as anything other than the Arch Mage's incompetence, despite your obvious talent for magery."

"No, he didn't threaten me," she assured the other woman flatly.

"You have been gone a long time," Faralda said after an uncomfortable silence in which the pair halted awkwardly at the end of the walkway. "What kept you away so long?"

"I meant to come back," Ysmir replied honestly, "If only to visit. Just…life happened. And—no offense—the College isn't the kind of place I want to bring any young child. I'd be afraid they'd manage to blow themselves up or fall over a railing."

"Oh! You didn't tell me that you got married!" Faralda exclaimed happily. Apparently marriage was a perfectly acceptable excuse for not coming to visit for nine years.

"I never married," Ysmir objected hastily, waving her hands slightly as if to ward off the thought.

The elf looked thrown for a moment, then outraged, "If that man forced himself upon you—"

"No! No, nothing like that!" Ysmir cried, eyes wide. It had never even occurred to her that Faralda would assume that Ancano had raped her. "I adopted several children over the years. It seemed I couldn't go anywhere without kicking up an orphan!"

"And you being an orphan yourself…yes, I could see why you would begin collecting them. I still remember that litter of kittens you snuck into the Hall of Attainment," the older mage reminisced, eyes dancing.

"And how they would follow J'zargo around!" Ysmir laughed. "Are they still here?"

Faralda nodded. "I have one, the Arch Mage kept another, and Tolfdir took the third, but they still follow J'zargo around when he visits."

She laughed again, then shivered as a gust of cold air snuck under her cloak and slithered down her spine like an ice drake. "Well, no more putting this off, I suppose. Thank you, Faralda, for welcoming me back."

"Plenty have gone into the world after finishing their education," the elf assured her warmly, putting a hand on her arm, "We only wondered that you left without saying goodbye."

"I hate goodbyes," Ysmir said honestly. "Back then, I assumed everyone else felt the same."

With that, she turned and began walking into the courtyard. Faralda didn't follow, so she assumed the woman was returning to her post. Mirabelle glanced up at her, then down to the book she was reading before doing a double-take. Ysmir smiled and waved, and the Master Wizard closed the book and approached. Before she reached her, however, Ancano walked out of the Hall of Elements and nearly ran her over. He scowled when he saw her and opened his mouth to speak, but Ysmir silenced him how she had always longed to; she punched him in the jaw so hard he spun, slipped on the ice, and landed on his knees.

"That's for what you did the night I left, you pervert!" she declared, stepping around him like she couldn't bear his presence (which really, was fairly close to the truth), and left him and Mirabelle wondering just what he had done the night he couldn't remember. Now, she hoped, he would actively avoid her during the rest of her stay. And everyone else was sure to remember and wonder about a night he would rather pretend never happened.

Her smugness was short-lived, for when she entered the Hall of Elements she was struck dumb by the giant, glowing sphere rotating above the middle well of the room. It spun lazily, emitting a strange, unsettling humming noise, the sigils engraved along the black bands writhing slightly. Faintly, she heard someone lecturing, and ducked into The Arcanaeum before anyone noticed her. Climbing the stairs carefully, in case someone was about to turn the corner with their nose in a book instead of paying attention to where they were going, she emerged into the library with a feeling of contentment for the sight and smell of all those books. Once, she had briefly entertained the idea of succeeding Urag as Librarian, but had quickly abandoned that notion when she realized just how bored she would be.

An image of Miraak, alone for millennia amongst the stacks of Apocrypha, entered her mind unwillingly, and she forced it away with a violent toss of her head. The movement—and undoubtedly, the flash of red—caught the orc's attention, and a moment passed before he called, "Didn't think I would see you again. Rule still stands; you damage any of these books, and I will have you torn apart by angry atronachs."

She laughed, "Why Urag, I'm touched! I didn't know you missed your book fetcher so much!"

"I've had four or five different book fetchers since you left, and three of them actually came back!" he countered, actually coming out from behind his counter to greet her. "What's this?" he asked, nodding to the bag she held.

"I was just at Raven Rock, and it occurred to me that you might not have all these," she replied, handing him the bag of books, both common and rare, that she had brought from Severin Manor.

"Hmm," he said meditatively, going back to his accustomed place to sort through the volumes. Needless to say, there were no Black Books in there, but Ysmir had a way of stumbling across uncommon writings, including ancient journals, and she could never help but pick them up. Perhaps that was what had grabbed the attention of Mora in the first place.

"So, Urag, I need to do some research on the prophesies of the Last Dragonborn. Not the new stuff, mind, the really old writings I couldn't find elsewhere."

He looked up, eyes narrowed, "Was this a sort of bribe?" he asked gesturing to the books.

She rolled her eyes, "You've let me read rare books before, Urag. I don't intend to take any of them out of The Arcanaeum. If I want the knowledge elsewhere, I'll make notes, as always."

"See that you don't spill any ink on them, then" he replied, walking over to a case and simply opening it for her to see, pointing to a section in the middle, just above eye height. "This entire shelf is nothing but writings on the prophesy of Alduin's return. Some of it is drivel, some of it not. There are one or two new books that should interest you, too. Especially this one," he said, taking one down and handing it to her, "written by a man called Esbern, one of the last of the Blades. He personally met the Dragonborn. Describes her as a young woman with red hair and purple eyes."

She gazed at him soberly. "Who else knows? I don't want to be studied or stared at, Urag. That's the reason I never mentioned it when I was here. Well, that and I didn't quite believe it myself, yet."

"I didn't tell anyone, but I'm not the only person who read that book, Noyo—no, you go by Ysmir now. Ysmir, the Dragon of the North," he snorted a little.

"The Greybeards Named me," she replied with a shrug.

"What you call yourself is irrelevant; Dragonborn or not, take care of these books or I'll have your hide to re-cover them."

The corner of her mouth twitched upward. "Yes sir."

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**As always, I hope you guys like this chapter.**

**Thanks for reading!**


	6. Chapter 6: The Augur of Dunlain

It seemed this was only the first of the books Esbern was planning on writing about the prophesies and how they were fulfilled. He had not yet begun to write on her experiences, only what was written on Alduin's wall, and what texts survived from that time. She had translated a few Word Walls for him, ones that had something interesting to say (to him, anyway) and he drew some rather interesting conclusions from them. Unfortunately, he had only finished one book so far; she would still need to speak with him. Not that she minded Esbern. Actually, she was rather fond of the old geezer, and he (ironically) reminded her a lot of Paarthurnax. It was Delphine she couldn't stand.

The door to The Arcanaeum opened, and Ysmir tensed without meaning to, looking up to see Brelyna standing uncertainly in the stone arch that marked the entrance. Ysmir gave her a warm smile. "Brelyna! It's so good to see you!" she exclaimed, putting the book aside to go give the Dunmer a welcoming hug, which the young woman returned hesitantly.

"I wasn't sure you were really back," the woman replied. Ysmir was glad to see that the elf had started to wear her hair down, rather in that quite unflattering pair of buns she used to.

"Just visiting, I'm afraid," Ysmir revealed, and felt guilty when the Dunmer's shoulders drooped. "I see you've attained your Mastery," she noted, causing the young elf's head to rise in pride.

"Yes," she said, looking down at her robes and tugging a bit on the hem of the hood. "I decided to focus on Alteration, although I have recently started to study Conjuration with more enthusiasm."

"You're not going to turn me into a cow again, are you?" Ysmir teased, leading the elf back to the chair nearest the one she had taken. She had to move a stack of books before they sat, and cast around a moment before finding a cushion that was unused or not worn flat from being a book prop.

"Oh, no!" Brelyna laughed, relaxing, and began to fill Ysmir in on what she had been doing. To Ysmir's slight consternation, there was much of spell craft and little personal, other than a brief fling with Onmund. That affair had ended when he attained Mastery and was invited to be personal wizard to a rich man in his home town.

"What about the new apprentices? Surely you've made some new friends?" she persisted, but it seemed that the shy girl had holed herself up in her studies.

No wonder she was so glad to see Ysmir.

The Dragonborn went to her temporary bed in the Hall of Countenance that night feeling frustrated and guilty. By all accounts, she should be the Last Dragonborn. Every part of the prophesy said "last," not "second to last," or "one of the last." She had poured through all the books The Arcanaeum had on the subject and had a great sheaf of notes, but so far there was nothing to help her discover the fate of her daughter.

Also plaguing her was her shy friend's loneliness. She already longed to be away from here and heading home to her family, but she felt she must do _something_ about Brelyna before she left. She turned over, snuggling her face into the pillow and missing the twin's warmth, frowning at the wall beyond the darkness.

Footsteps outside the doorless alcove made her freeze, deliberately relaxing her body and making her breathing even and slow. Faintly seen through her eyelashes, a figure paused outside, silhouetted by the mage fire in the central well. Whoever it was seemed to consider her a moment, then move on, probably deciding to talk to her in the morning rather than wake her.

Ysmir let her eyes shut fully. She still had much to do, and really should be sleeping. Unfortunately, she was remembering why she had spent so many nights away from the College while she lived there, despite the warm bed and having a roof over her head. The air in the Halls felt so close, and the rooms were so quiet. When the lights were turned low, it felt like a much smaller space. She rolled onto her back, spreading her limbs wide to assure herself that there were no confining walls in touching distance, closing in and trapping her. So assured, she forced herself to relax, concentrating on each set of muscles individually until some of the tension left. Long before she was finished, she was asleep.

* * *

Tolfdir came to get her the next morning, and she got the new pleasure of talking to her old mentor as an equal as they ate breakfast in a little alcove in the Hall of Countenance. He queried her on what she had meant by calling Ancano a pervert, but she pressed her lips together tightly and refused to speak on it, which she hoped would drive the snobbish elf mad. She did, however, assure the elderly man that she took no harm from the Thalmor. This particular one, at any rate.

After breakfast, it was time to make a visit to the Midden.

The Midden was a dank, cold maze of crumbling brickwork and cobwebs, held together by ice and ancient mortar, filled with ice wraiths and draugr. Ysmir had always hated coming down here, although she had done so often to speak with someone peculiar, even by her standards.

"You come again." The disembodied voice echoed through the cold stone hall, making the icicles shiver.

"Why do you always start talking before I've even reached you?" Ysmir complained, pulling a cobweb from her hair. Apparently, judging from the number of frostbite spiders she'd had to kill, no one had been down her since her last visit.

Somehow, he heard her. "I know of your coming. I know much that is to come, with no hope of changing it. To know such things is to despair."

"Same old bundle of optimism, aren't you?" she finally reached his door, walking in to confront one of the College's greatest secrets; the Augur of Dunlain. He had no body, anymore, but took the form of a transparent orb of energy with shafts of white-blue light delineating the boundaries, within which tiny sparks twirled and twinkled in a double-helix. For some reason, the members of the Collage hated talking about him, but she found the melancholy spirit good company, when not steeped in despondency.

"You have done much since you last came to see me, Dragonborn," he replied, a note of respect in his voice.

"Friends call me Ysmir, Augie," she replied with a grin, covering the stone stool she had brought there so long ago with fire until it was warm to the touch and she could sit on it without freezing.

"Ysmir. You come seeking advice on your daughter, but I have none to give. The future is uncertain, my friend, and has been since you last returned from Apocrypha six years ago. Your fate was to lose to the First Dragonborn, or he to lose to you. It was not intended that you join, although I wondered if you might."

She sat up like he had stuck her with a pin, "What do you mean, you wondered?"

"You are ruled by your passions, Dovahkiin, as is the Dragon Priest, as are all dragons. You are the only female of your kind remaining, and he the only male of your kind that you would meet. The draw between those suspected to be _dovahkiin_ was once a well-known secret, of which stories were whispered but never written. Like the werewolves you have taken into your life, the bonds between those of your kind are strong. The Companions could not sit back and watch the Silver Hand slaughter their brother and sister wolves, even if the Hand had left them alone."

Ysmir scowled, thinking uncomfortably about her draw to the First Dragonborn, "Didn't stop him from trying to steal my soul for his escape," she pointed out bitterly.

"If he had killed you, Ysmir, Miraak would have destroyed himself past redemption, and lost a part of himself forever. And you, had you been victorious, would have withered, unable to bear what you had done. The Daedra would have taken you, and you would have walked forever amongst the tomes of Apocrypha, a shade of yourself."

Ysmir shuddered violently. "But what of Darva? Do you see her facing Alduin? Will the World Eater return?"

"I do not see Darva at all."

The sentence caught her breath in her throat and stilled her. He didn't see Darva? The Augur must have sensed her distress, for he added, "I do not see her future. I can see her past, the life she has already lived, and I can see her now, being held in Farkas's arms as she cries over a skinned knee. I have watched her off and on for all her life, Ysmir. She is fascinating; a life I cannot see until it unfolds. Rest assured that I would find a way to contact you if that ever were to change."

"Thank you," she said gratefully, rising. She never was able to stay down here too long; it was far too cold. She had already instinctively invoked her flame cloak in defense. "I must go. I can't feel my toes anymore."

"I see what is in your mind, Ysmir. I will meet with your Dark Elf friend. I do not know if we will be able to talk as you and I once did; the other future I cannot see is my own."

"You'll get along fine, Augie," Ysmir said with a smile. "I cannot see into your mind or into the future, but I know two lonely souls when I see them."

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**Hello, everybody! Sorry for missing a week and then posting a short, semi-boring chapter. My uploads are going to continue to be a little erratic for a while, I'm afraid, as I am in the middle of moving, and will be traveling for a while after.**

**A. D. Spinner and CreationUnleased, thank you SO much for your continued reviews! I find them very encouraging! **

**Teaser: the next chapter is my favorite that I've written so far!**


	7. Chapter 7: First Meetings

Darva missed her momma. She sat listlessly at the dinner table, kicking her feet, while the boys argued over her head.

"Enough!" Papa Vilkas roared. The bickering ceased immediately, and Darva felt a pang of raw envy for Papa Vil's ability to do that. If she were still allowed to say _"Gol Hah"_ she probably could have gotten them to behave, but those were bad words now, and she didn't want to get a spanking.

"Cheer up, Honey-bee," Sofie whispered as she put a bowl of venison stew in front of her youngest sister. "Runa and I made boiled cream treats for desert."

Well, who wouldn't that cheer up? She finished up her dinner in a much better frame of mind, not even minding that Blaise and Alesan kept whispering to each other, as if she were not stuck right between them and could hear every word they said.

After dinner she helped Lucia clean up the table and wash the dishes, mind still whirling furiously with what the boys were talking about. Finally, she ventured, "Don't you think Momma's been gone an awful long time?"

Lucia stopped and looked at her. "You heard that messenger that came yesterday; Momma had to go to Raven Rock. That's a long way away! And she has to go somewhere else before she even thinks of coming home."

"I wonder why she left so quickly," Darva wondered aloud. "I mean, do you know what she was going to do?"

Lucia shrugged, using the gesture to wipe some of the suds off her cheek with her shoulder. "Whatever it was, it must be important. She hasn't left like that since the first time she had to go to Raven Rock, after all those funny-robed people with the scary bone masks attacked."

"Hmm," was all she said, gaze down so Lucia couldn't read her expression, though she could see the outlines of her round, worried face in the tub. The soap bubbles sparkled with rainbows in the light from the window, like the pretty ribbons of color that made waves across the Skyrim night. "I want to go outside," Darva stated after a while, staring at the suds-covered spoon in her hand.

"All that's left is pots, and you're not big enough to scrub them really well anyway. You go; I'll finish up," Lucia told her.

Darva gave her a look of undying gratitude as only a five-year-old could and shot out of the kitchen like the bee she was named for.

Alesan and Blaise were down by the lake, trying to hit a fish with the short, light bows the twins had gifted the boys with last Midwinter. Runa had gotten one as well, but Darva had gotten a new doll like Lucia and Sofie. She was a little put out by that, because as much as she loved her doll she had two already, and no bow. Maybe if she asked Auntie Aela to teach her it would get back to the Papas that she wanted one, even if she was too little to fight.

Quietly as she could she came up behind her brothers, hoping to scare them into getting a bit wet.

"—don't think she's coming back," Alesan was saying.

"She always comes back. She's not like…like our parents. She's the Dragonborn. She can face anything!" Blaise argued.

"She's been gone a long time. I think something bad has happened, and this time it might be too much for her," the Redguard boy said fearfully.

She halted, fear making her freeze as her stomach tied itself in a hard, tight knot. "That's not true!" Honey-bee shrieked, startling both boys so badly that they slipped. Blaise caught himself, but Alesan tumbled into the water.

"Oh, no!" Blaise cried, reaching down to help his brother. Only then did Darva see that the fish they were shooting at wasn't a trout, but one of the feared slaughterfish. The slaughterfish darted forward and caught Alesan's boot before he could get all the way out of the water, and the boy yelled in pain.

"Kill it! Kill it!" he shouted, kicking at the fish with his other foot as it held tightly to his boot. It gazed at them with beady eyes and wriggled, eliciting a cry of pain from the boy it held.

Blaise darted in and stomped on the fish as hard as he could until it went limp. Alesan gingerly pulled his foot from the boot, leaving it in the jaws of the dead fish. "Look what you did, Darva!" the Breton accused, watching the skin around the punctures swell rapidly under Alesan's horrified and fascinated gaze.

"It…it's alright," Alesan said tightly, his face scrunched up and a few tears leaking out. "Not her fault."

"Yes it is!" Blaise argued, wrenching the boot from the dead jaws.

Heavy footfalls heralded the arrival of one of the Papas. "What happened?" Farkas asked, running up with Aventus on his heels.

"Darva made Alesan fall into the water, when she saw there was a slaughterfish in there!" Blaise cried, pointing at the little girl.

"I did not! It was an accident!" Darva yelled back, tears leaking down her face as surly as Alesan's. She felt terrible; she hadn't meant to get her brother hurt, no matter what awful things he was saying.

"Why were you sneaking up behind us, then?" he demanded.

"I didn't know there was a _slaughter_fish!"

"Both of you, stop arguing," Farkas ordered. "Aventus, go get Lydia and have Runa boil some water. A little bandaging and some health potions and he'll be good as new," he said, lifting the boy and starting up the hill.

"You're such a stupid crybaby, Darva!" Blaise growled.

"I am not!" she blubbered, sniffing.

"Look what you did! And you did something to me too, just before Momma left. I bet she left because of you. You're turning into a spoiled brat that does bad things to people, and she couldn't take it anymore, so she left."

"That's not true!" the child shrieked.

"Is so! You get everything you want, all the time! You get out of chores, and people do things for you; you've never done a full, hard day's work in your life the way the rest of us have. You're just a whiny little baby, and she was sick of it, so she went away."

"I wish you had fallen into the lake instead of Alesan!" Darva yelled, then turned and ran down the road, away from the house. Blaise huffed and crossed his arms, refusing to run after her like everyone else did. He trudged back to the house. It wasn't like a five-year-old could run very far, after all.

Darva ran until her legs couldn't anymore, bending and placing her hands on her knees as she breathed deeply, glancing about. There was no one around, but a clomping from up the road made her hide behind some trees, just in case. A horse came wandering around, a pretty creature with a cream coat and empty saddle. Darva peeked out cautiously, but there was no one else around. "Hello," she told him, walking cautiously up to him. Momma had a horse—a big one with black spots on him called Jughead—and Darva had been allowed to sit on his back as Ysmir led him around the house. She liked horses. This one seemed to like her, but Darva knew that could change if it was frightened. Papa Vil had explained it to her quite seriously. She thought a moment.

_"Kaan,"_ she said quickly, hoping she said it right. Ysmir always said that when wild wolves came to fight with Precious.

The horse put his nose in her chest and made a "wuuulllf!" noise that made her giggle. She looked back down the road, toward the house that was obscured by trees at this distance. "I don't want to go back," she said sadly, "Blaise is right; it is my fault Alesan got hurt." She wiped leaking eyes on her sleeve, then gave the horse a watery smile. "Let's go look for Momma. Whenever she needs to fix the house, she goes this way. There's a mill there, and they're probably Momma's friends, or why would she buy from them?"

The horse seemed to think this was a grand idea, for he stopped to eat some grass right underneath a tall ledge of ground that Darva could easily climb and use to hop onto his back. He snorted, but responded when she tugged on one side of the reigns to get him going in the direction that she wanted. She couldn't get them untied from the pommel, but just tugging them individually seemed to work.

Not too much further down the road and she spotted a strange stack of stones just under the trees. Beside it were some pretty purple flowers she had only ever seen once, through the door to her mother's Alchemy lab. She had longed to put them in a vase, but they hadn't had any stems. These ones did, and she thought maybe if she brought them to Alesan he would like them, and wouldn't be mad at her.

She directed the horse closer to the pile, which had another ledge close by that she would be able to hop onto. A strange creaking sound reached them, and the horse froze, then fidgeted nervously. There was a flash of something behind the stones and the beast shied just as Darva was trying to get off. Slipping sideways out of the saddle, she landed with an "oof!" that drove the air out of her lungs, and landed badly on her wrist, which hurt a lot. The child wailed in protest.

The creaking was joined by rustling, and she looked up and froze. A skeleton stood by the stones, holding a sword and shield and looking around. The creaking came from bones rubbing together as it, impossibly, moved. The little girl held very, very still.

The horse wasn't so smart.

Another dead thing rounded the rise of land beside the road and began attacking the horse, which reared and plunged at it. Instinctively, Darva turned her head to see.

The hollow eye sockets of first skull fell on her, and it raced toward her with surprising speed. Darva scooted backwards as fast as she could, not even having time to stand up and run. The rusted blade of the creature sliced just where she had been.

Clumsily pulling herself to her feet, Darva turned to flee, but the dead person swung his shield arm, catching her across the back. She cried out, falling forward and catching herself with her good hand against a pine tree. Turning, she saw the skeleton raise its sword, and screamed, hiding her face against the bark.

_ "Zun Haal Viik!"_

Darva looked up in surprise at the unfamiliar, male voice that Shouted just like her momma. The sword shot from the skeleton's grasp, taking its arm with it. A man rushed it from behind her, cutting upward and shattering the bones from each other with an ugly, scary greenish sword that writhed in some places, like it had worms on it.

The bones fell to pieces and collapsed. One of them rolled to her feet and she kicked it away with a squeamish little shriek.

The man turned to her, and Darva forgot to be squeamish.

He was terrifying. He wore strange, grey-brown robes with gold dragon bones, and an awful mask that reminded her both of a picture of a squid in one of her mother's books, and the little black pincer-beetles that ate dead things. The icky sword was still unsheathed in his hand.

He took a step toward her, and Darva panicked.

_"Fus Ro Dah!"_ she Shouted as hard as she could.

The man staggered backward, nearly knocked off his feet. Darva stared. She had seen her momma send a giant flying by yelling at it with those words. Had she done them wrong?

The man laughed. It wasn't a mean laugh, and he didn't sound mad at her. "Well done, little one!" he crowed, shaking his head. He reached up and removed the mask, and his face was funny, but he was smiling, and Darva had the strange feeling she should know him. Something in him called to her, like when Grandfather visited and called her _"Kulaas."_

The man knelt in front of her, and she saw half his face was covered in scales. "Are you hurt?" he asked her, obviously concerned. He reached up and wiped the tears from her cheeks with the thumb of his glove, examining her face as if looking for something unnamed.

She nodded, holding her wrist to her chest. "Let me see," he commanded and, slowly, she held out her wrist, which was swelling as rapidly as Alesan's foot. Gently, he prodded it, which hurt and she snatched it back, looking at him distrustfully. "Forgive me; I only wanted to see if it was broken. I do not believe it is. May I see it again? I promise not to touch."

Gazing at him suspiciously, ready to snatch her hand back the moment he even looked like he wanted to poke it again, Darva complied. Then the man held one of his hands near it, and it began to glow with familiar golden light. The light moved to surround her wrist, and the swelling immediately vanished. She twisted it experimentally, the man giving her a rueful look as she did so.

"That is not a spell I have used in a very long time," he said. "This is not how I imagined we'd meet."

"Who are you?" Darva asked, gazing up at him.

He smiled, a real, happy smile that brought an answering one from her, and said "You may call me Bormah, little one."

"I'm Darva," she said, holding out her hand like she had been taught when meeting new people. "But people call me Honey-bee."

"A sweet little girl with a surprising sting," he chuckled, taking her hand and kissing the air above it, like heroes did when they met a great lady in the stories. Darva giggled. "I admit, it fits you better than I thought it would."

"How do you know about me?" Darva asked, curious.

"I…know your mother," he replied. "She talked to me about you."

"She did? Have you seen her? Is she alright?" Darva burst out, looking up at him anxiously.

"She is very well," her new friend assured her. "But she would not be happy to hear that I came here to meet you. It's going to have to be a secret between us, alright?"

She wrinkled her nose. "Papa Vilkas says I'm too little to be allowed to keep secrets."

Bormah scowled, "Well 'Papa Vilkas' obviously doesn't know women very well."

"How come you can Shout?" Darva asked curiously, stepping out into the weak sunlight. Bormah stepped back to allow her room. He had a curious, transparent quality about him that made her feel like maybe she was dreaming this, but the day felt real, and her wrist had hurt, and she usually didn't dream smells along with sights. "Momma can yell like that, but Lydia can't, and neither can Papa Vil or Papa Farkas."

"Papa Vil _and_ Papa Farkas?" he repeated, his face slightly shocked.

Darva giggled. "They're twins. They stay with us a lot of the time. Papa Farkas is a lot of fun, but Papa Vilkas seems to think all fun things are bad. Unless they're boring after a while, like sewing. He says I can do more things like learning to fight when I'm older, but right now I'm too small and it stinks."

"And…do Papa Vilkas, Papa Farkas, and your mother all share a room?" he asked after a moment of thought.

"Of course," she said matter-of-factly, because she had to share a room and so did everyone else; even Lydia shared a room with the bard, when they had one, so why shouldn't her momma share a room with the Papas? She giggled again, "That's a funny shade of purple you're turning."

Bormah muttered something under his breath as Darva was reminded of the purple flowers that had pulled her attention over this way to begin with, and she walked over and reached out to pick one when Bormah's hand clamped around her wrist, tightly at first but then abruptly gentling. "Don't touch that, Little Bee. Those are nightshade flowers; they are beautiful but poisonous, and they grow on the graves of the dead."

Snatching her hand back, she looked aghast at the flowers. "So someone is buried here? On the side of the road? That's awful!"

He gave her a curious look, and it wasn't her imagination; she could see right through him. "Are…are you dead?" she asked fearfully, backing up a bit.

He shook his head. "I am not dead, I am just…somewhere else. I was able to send a part of myself here when you were in trouble, but I cannot stay long. Still," he looked down at his hands, then around the gravesite, "this is more, much more than I was able to do before." He smiled down at her, and she felt warm inside, "I have you to thank for that, I think."

"What did I do?" Darva asked, surprised.

"You simply are, Little Bee," he said fondly, reaching down as if to lift her, but his hands went straight through. He frowned and looked sad for a moment. "Come, we must get you on the path home," he said, walking around the rise.

The horse was shaking in place, surrounded by bones. Darva knew how it felt. At the sight of them it neighed in fright and reared, but Bormah simply said _"Kaan Drem Ov,"_ and it stopped, shivering, its golden hide twitching. Bormah took a deep breath, as if he was steeling himself for something, and for a moment he seemed solid again. In that moment he reached down and lifted her onto the horse as she squeaked in surprise. "Be safe, Little Bee," he said, "and ride straight home." He was disappearing faster than before, and Darva reached out, not wanting him to go. "Remember, this is our little secret."

Then he was gone.

.

.

.

**I love this chapter. It makes me happy, and was one of the most fun to write. I sincerely hope you all like it as much as I do. So my posting will probably be fairly erratic for a few weeks, as I will be traveling. Honestly, I thought I'd have trouble posting this week, too, but things turned out all right. We moved out of our apartment, and I had my birthday. I got to eat chocolate cake and hold a puppy yesterday, and today I got to eat leftover cake and wrote ten pages. It was a good day, despite my spilling the water from the turtle tank all over the floor. Also, because my muse likes to mess with my head, I started a prequel to this story; basically a one-shot of Ysmir in Helgen. It was sort of odd for me, because she a) went by a different name, and b) was a lot less trusting and mature. She has ten more years of development between that story and this, and it's almost like she's a different character with the same backstory. I'll probably post it at some point, and you can read what she was like as a sullen teenager.**

**Anyway, as always, please read and review. Even if you don't have much to say, just hearing that you liked it means a lot. If you didn't like it, I'd like to know what I could do better for you. **

**Cheers!**

**Evil is Relative. **


	8. Chapter 8: Something Peculiar

Ysmir frowned and watched Braith swagger away from her down the main road of Whiterun Hold. "One of these days I'm going to spank that little brat," she muttered crossly. Adrianne chuckled as she counted out the money for the former bandit weapons she had bought. They were of inferior quality, most of them, but Ysmir knew the smith could just melt them down and make pots of the ones beyond saving.

"Amren's taken notice of her behavior—he's talked about perhaps sending her to a school for the children of Imperial soldiers intent on following their parents into service. Saffir won't hear of it, though," Adrianne told her, gazing after the child. "It is strange though; those two used to get along quite well. Braith and the Battle-Born boy, I mean."

Ysmir rolled her eyes. "Blaise used to get along quite well with everyone too; then suddenly he woke up and hated girls with an antagonism to rival Ysgramor's hatred of elves."

The Imperial chuckled. "He's at that age, is he?"

The Dragonborn let out a huff of impatience. "Alesan's the same age, but he doesn't seem to have a problem with the girls."

Adrianne surprised her with a hearty laugh. Noticing her customer's questioning look, she explained, "When my father became steward and we moved into the city Idolaf would chase me around and pull my hair. Ulfberth was the one that confronted him about it one day, and that started the friendship that led to our marriage. It was years before I knew Idolaf only tormented me because he didn't know how else to get my attention."

Ysmir stared at her for a second before joining her laughter. "You think Braith picks on Lars because she likes him? You heard her; she'll pick a fight with anybody."

"So why keep antagonizing someone who will never take her up on it?" the smith asked pointedly.

"I ask myself the same question every time she picks one with me," Ysmir sighed, taking the pouch Adrianne handed her and turning away with a wave.

Just after she had sealed the deal with the blacksmith, Aela came down the road with a conflicted expression on her lovely face. "Let me guess," Ysmir drawled, "Something came up and they need you to stay."

The Huntress nodded, looking as though half her mind were elsewhere, "This is not a mission for an inexperienced member, and it calls for an archer. I am the best, perhaps the only, choice for this."

The mage sighed. "Then you must stay. I can buy a new horse at the stables; Jughead's getting lonely since the cow got stolen by a giant."

"I thought Blaise gave her to the giant to go away," the Companion said, surprised.

"I…that would explain a lot," Ysmir said, thinking back on how smug the boy had gotten for a few days after that. Well, before his attitude had gotten on her nerves and she made him go clean the stall the cow had used until it smelled more strongly of soap than anything else.

Aela laughed at the look on her face and offered to put her up for the night in Jorrvaskr, but Ysmir declined, wanting to get home as soon as possible. She hadn't been away for more than a month in so long, and she was a little shocked at how much it hurt to be away from them. Perhaps she should just pay to have someone kidnap Esbern rather than go see him herself…oh, what was she thinking?

The horse she ended up buying was a beautiful, glossy black creature called Queen Alfsigr, but Ysmir decided to call her Allie, because it would be easier for the children to pronounce. Allie was feeling frisky and glad to be out of the stables, for she trotted eagerly along the road with neck arched and tail flagged. She had a smooth, easy gait and Ysmir found herself greatly enjoying the ride, looking about the Whiterun Plains with new eyes. They really were beautiful, and it had been a long while since she had simply paid them any mind.

In the distance, a pair of giants walked their mammoth herd to a pool in one of the streams, and she reined in Allie to watch and avoid looking hostile. One of the giants noticed her anyway, and stared at her suspiciously for some time before moving on. Ysmir wondered how Blaise had managed to communicate with one, if his tale was true. They moved on quickly, going back the way they had come and allowing her to get around them in a wide arc. Allie was fast and she made much better time than she thought she would, reaching the wooded area at the base of the mountains by late afternoon. Finally, though, the night grew too dark and she made camp, Allie browsing the grass contentedly beside her. She placed a ring of fire runes around the camp, far enough away that the horse wouldn't accidently set one off, and hoped that if a rabbit had the bad sense to cross one again, it at least did it at a decent hour where she could simply finish grilling it for breakfast.

Around three in the morning she woke as Allie snorted uneasily.

Coming toward them down the road was a ghostly figure riding a horse. Ysmir had seen him before; a headless rider that galloped the roads of Skyrim by night. Watching him, she reflected on the many times she had tried to follow but gotten left behind. Of course, this was all years ago, and she hadn't had a horse then…but she hadn't had children she was eager to return to, either. So she watched the figure approach, intending to watch him gallop on past, when something peculiar happened.

The rider slowed, the ghostly horse pawing the ground nervously. Something dark appeared above them, and a dark shape reached out.

The spirit spurred his horse into action, and they shot past her camping spot with a speed she had never seen. The blot of darkness vanished as if it had never been. It was over in seconds, but left her feeling strange and shaken.

Ysmir crawled out of her bedroll and poked the fire a bit before going over to Allie. The poor steed rolled her eyes, whites showing all the way around. Aparently the incident spooked her as much as it did her new mistress, although animals didn't seem to like ghosts in general. "It's alright," she said, gently stroking the soft muzzle. _"Kaan,"_ she muttered, the first word all she needed to sooth the gentle beast. "It's alright."

Gazing out into the night after the apparition, she wondered just what that blotch could mean.

* * *

Runa saw her first. Her eldest child was up in the top of the new Alchemy tower with Sofie, staring off into space rather than doing the mending in her lap, wishing she was in the yard or the basement with one of the practice dummies. She and Sofie were altering some of Ysmir's old clothing to suit her, as her old clothing was getting too short at the ankles and too tight across the chest. Blaise had walked in on her bathing the day before and teased her about becoming a werewolf, because he saw hair that wasn't coming from her scalp. She had clubbed him a scrub brush and screamed for Lydia, who had dragged the boy away by the ear and returned to have a long talk with Runa about what it meant to become a woman. So far, Runa didn't like the sound of it, and was heartily wishing she had been born a boy.

Movement caught her attention, and she narrowed her eyes. Someone on a horse…as the figure came closer, her lips curled upward into a smile as the red hair caught the light. She whacked Sofie on the arm, and at the girl's indignant noise, pointed.

Sofie leapt to her feet, sewing forgotten, and raced down the ladder. Runa was hot on her heels, gleeful that they had caught sight of Ysmir first. She caught the girl's arm when Sofie would have turned to start running right out the door, and grabbed Jughead's hackamore, vaulting on his bare back. He looked at her curiously as she held down a hand for Sofie, pulling her younger sister up behind her and sending Jughead racing down the hill.

To her satisfaction, they reached Ysmir before the boys even noticed she was back.

"Well, look at you two," their mother said with a smile. "Taming wild horses. What's next? Am I going to wake up tomorrow to find a note saying you went to Whiterun to join the Companions?"

Runa grinned, drawing Jughead up alongside the beautiful beast her mother was riding. Her mother—how strange to think that Ysmir was only barely twice her age. "You know they won't take me for another two years," she said.

"That reminds me," Ysmir said, reaching into her bags, "Happy birthday. I'm sorry I missed it," she added.

Runa exclaimed happily as she took the package, quickly undoing the strings. The wrappings fell onto her lap, and she gasped. "This…this is…"

"Skyforge steel," Ysmir confirmed, turning it so that the girl could see the special designs Eorlund Gray-Mane had crafted into the pommel and quillons of the dagger. The blacksmith had started designing Runa weapons three years ago, the first time Aela brought Runa to Jorrvaskr, and the girl had declared that she was going to join the Companions. Her entrance to the order was only a matter of time; one had to be a minimum of fifteen years of age to be a Companion. So far, the only members in living memory to actually join at that age were Vilkas and Farkas.

"Mother…" she said, looking up with tears in her eyes. Ysmir smiled. Somehow, without Runa even noticing when she did it, Sofie had clambered from one horse to the other, and sat perched up behind Ysmir, holding to her tightly.

"I hope you got Aventus something that nice," Sofie piped up, "or he's going to be jealous."

"Uh, two children becoming thirteen in one year! In the same month! What did I do to deserve this?" Ysmir asked the sky facetiously. The girls giggled.

"Mother!" Blaise shouted, throwing down his fishing pole and racing up the road. Alesan followed more slowly, and Ysmir frowned, noting his leg was bandaged.

"Alesan got bit by a slaughterfish," Sofie murmured after glancing up at her mother's face.

"How did that happen?" Ysmir wondered aloud, halting Allie and helping Sofie slip to the ground so she could dismount.

"Darva snuck up behind them and scared them," the girl replied. "It was the same day she stole a horse."

"She what?" Ysmir demanded, voice going a bit shrill. Blaise hit her side in a running hug, and she had to fight to stay balanced. Then Aventus appeared with Lucia, both of them covered in dirt from working in the gardens, and the twins and Lydia appeared, then Inigo and Ma'Rakha, and she couldn't get a word in edgewise.

* * *

The children were all passed out in their beds (finally), and the adults were sitting around the fire, filling Ysmir in on what had happened while they were gone.

"The kitten caught a skeever, yes. It was very tasty," Inigo said proudly.

Farkas snorted, "Only a cat would think a skeever was tasty," he declared scornfully.

Inigo didn't bat an eyelash, "Only a house dog would turn up his nose at one."

"Shush," Lydia told them sternly, with the same inflection and expression she used on Precious, and Inigo and Farkas obeyed in much the same way, with identical cringes. Ysmir smothered a chuckle, but it turned into another yawn. She didn't think she could stay up much longer.

"I've covered half my bases," Ysmir told them. "I couldn't find any answers on Solstheim, although I have a…colleague who will keep searching for me, and there was nothing definitive in The Arcanaeum. That leaves Paarthurnax and Esbern."

"I'm surprised you didn't go to Paarthurnax first," Vil remarked, leaning forward with his elbows resting on his knees. His eyes had narrowed when she mention a colleague in Solstheim, which stirred vague feelings of alarm in her she was too tired to indulge in.

"I have to be very careful with Paarthurnax," she replied, yawning in the middle of the dragon's name. "I know the Blades still watch me, occasionally. I see the reflection of their looking glass from the mountains. It's a shame they don't use the same spot twice, or I'd be able to catch them at it."

"How do you know it's them?" Farkas asked.

"They're not the only ones with spyglasses," she replied with a grin. "So what's this I hear about Honey-bee stealing a horse?"

Lydia grimaced. "She had run away from the house after an argument with Blaise. It was just after Alesan had gotten bitten, so we were all distracted. She found a hunter's horse alone on the road and assumed it was a stray, and rode it back up to the house. This was, by the way, after we had been looking for her for the better part of an hour. Farkas met her halfway on the road, after tracking her scent."

Ysmir sighed, "Sounds like my daughter," she said, then yawned hugely. "Excuse me."

"That's enough talk for one night," Vilkas declared, scooping her out of the chair without a by-your-leave. "You've been ready to drop since you arrived," he said, carrying her up the stairs.

"Just because I'm tired doesn't mean I can't walk," she protested.

"Hush, you," he replied, setting her on the bed and starting to help her with her boots.

She looked at him with astonishment for a moment. "Vil, I think you might have mistaken me for Darva—I'm Ysmir, the woman who fights dragons and can tie her own bootlaces. Or untie them, as the case may be."

He silenced her with kiss a bit more possessive than his normal, casual touches, taking her entirely by surprise. "Now," he said, "you are going to go to sleep, not wake until long after the sun has risen, then take a long, hot bath, and eat everything your daughters urge on you. Understand?"

She grinned, "Sometimes the girls urge me to try Lydia's cooking. Does that count?"

"Minx," he growled, pulling off her other boot before knocking her backward on the bed, leaving kisses and little sharp nips all over her neck and collarbone.

Ysmir gasped, "What happened to going to sleep?" she asked, suddenly breathless.

"I did say you were going to sleep in, remember?" he replied, and Ysmir found she wasn't nearly as tired as she thought she was.


	9. Chapter 9: A Good Song

Darva was looking out over the lake, in the very top of one of the towers. Ysmir watched her for a few moments as the wind played with their hair and tugged at the little girl's skirts. "Honey-bee," she said after a while, "you're never going to get that dress done by watching the water."

"Hm?" the little girl asked, turning back. After seeing him again, Ysmir was able to spot more of Miraak's features in the girl's face. She had his brow, but softened. His unfairly long eyelashes. His chin, which she firmed in the same way when she was preparing to be stubborn.

"You're the one who wanted mage robes for your doll," Sofie reminded her, pulling another stitch tight with a bit of a huff. She had been trying to show her little sister something for several minutes, but the girl hadn't been attending.

"Right," Darva replied, picking up where she had left off, placing a few ragged stitches before being distracted by the water again. Sofie sighed and returned to her own sewing—or rather, Runa's sewing. Sofie was the best at stitching of all of them, Ysmir included, so she tended to end up with most of the sewing. "Momma," Darva finally said after a long while spent gazing over the lake, "May I go?"

Ysmir sighed and reached out, soothing the blond curls back from her child's face, "Sure, Honey-bee. Don't go far, though, alright? Stay in sight of the house."

"I promise I won't go far," the girl replied, lifting up the latch and sliding down the ladder the way the boys did; putting her feet to either side and using her hands to slow herself. She didn't like the way Momma was looking at her, as if she was different than before. Something had changed, and Darva didn't know if it was Ysmir, or herself. What if Blaise was right, and she was a bad girl, and Ysmir had realized it?

She walked down to the lake, turning left to travel along the shore until she turned a bend and couldn't be seen anymore. After all, she had only promised not to go far—if she stayed within sight of the house, chances were someone would come to see what she was doing, and she just wanted to think a minute. Holding her doll tightly, tossing aside the half-finished mage robes, she sank onto a rock and dipped her feet in the water, watching the ripples around them for several minutes. Minnows gathered around her toes, scattering when she wiggled them. A frog, startled by the sudden movement, darted into the water and disappeared under the layers of sunken leaves.

Darva leaned back, letting her head hang loose on her neck as she gazed up at the clouds. They were wispy today, like layers of gauze wrapped around the world. None of them particularly resembled anything else, even to her active imagination. Wind whispered through the branches of the trees, tugging once again at her hair, though not as much as when she was in the tower. She supposed she should apologize to Sofie for wasting her time—she just didn't have much of a head for something like sewing this afternoon.

_"Butterfly, butterfly: damage or fortify. Flutters down, sapphire snow; enchanter's helper, warrior's woe. Torchbug, torchbug: little light. Bad against mages, good in a fight_—Hello?" she paused in her song to look up, eyes a little wide as she heard a noise.

A man walked out of the brush, as if he had come from the road, and smiled widely when he saw her. He had suntanned skin and white hair, and carried a lute across his back, and a flute tucked through his belt. "Well met, little singer!" he called happily. "I heard your voice from the road and couldn't help but see whose sweet voice that was!"

Darva blushed. "I didn't know anyone could hear me," she admitted.

"I'm glad I did," he replied, stopping some distance away from her and bowing at the waist. "Talsgar; itinerate minstrel and wandering wastrel, at your service."

The little girl had risen to her feet as he spoke, brushing off her skirt. Now, she blinked her big eyes in confusion. "What's a wastrel?" For that matter, she didn't know what itinerate meant, but she hadn't caught the word well enough to ask.

"It means I cannot keep money in my pocket, little one," he replied with a laugh.

"Oh. Is there a hole in it? My sister Sofie could probably fix that for you, if you ask her nicely," she advised.

Talsgar laughed again, "No, charming young thing; I cannot help but spend my money. To be fair, though," he placed one long finger along the side of his nose, "much of it is on the expense of my travels, but I never was able to pass up good cooking, especially if it's expensive!"

"Are you a bard?" Darva asked, tilting her head to the side. The sun struck up red tints from her hair, and Talsgar thought for a moment that she looked familiar.

"Yes, little one, I am," he said proudly. "I wander the wilds, in search of song. And today I found one!" he teased.

"Oh, good. We need a bard," Darva said, pleased at this. When they went walking in the woods and found a wild berry bush or a group of truffles Lydia called it a "windfall." She supposed finding a bard wandering around just after the last one quit was a windfall as well, and took his hand and started leading him to the house. Talsgar protested a bit, but didn't pull his hand away even though he had to walk half-bent over, afraid of hurting the chubby little fingers wrapped around his.

Vilkas was chopping wood near where Ysmir used to keep all the large timbers, his shirt removed after it had gotten sodden with sweat under the midday sun. He looked up when he heard an unfamiliar voice, then Darva's cheerful chatter. She smiled sweetly when she saw him, leading a stranger who paled under his tan when he saw the imposing man with the big axe frown. "Papa Vil, look! I found a bard!"

"A bard?" Vil repeated, skeptical.

"Talsgar?" Ysmir called down, having seen them emerge from the woods. The bard looked up to see his sometimes fellow traveler standing at the railing, looking down with a grin, and finally realized who the little girl reminded him of.

"Ho, Ysmir!" he called, quite jovial, "This little one tells me you are in need of a bard, and seems to like me for the job."

"Hah!" she replied, swinging her legs over the railing and doing something quick and semi-acrobatic that brought her safely to the ground. One of the two boys by the woodpile watched this closely and she pointed at him, "Don't even think about it," she ordered. She was wearing a green tunic that came to her knees and charcoal trousers, and Talsgar thought she looked a lot more comfortable than when she was in armor. "I thought you said you were never planning on staying in one place. So, what? My daughter kidnapped you off the road?"

"As always, your assessment of the situation seems to be correct, with the tiny variation of we were just off the road," he replied.

"Can we keep him?" Darva asked, glancing from one to the other.

Ysmir laughed. "Ah, Honey-bee. People are not like animals; you can't just adopt them when they follow you home."

Darva glanced at the boys. "You did," she pointed out, and Vilkas gave a burst of laughter. Ysmir glared at him and he coughed, still smiling.

"That's…different. Anyway, would you like to stay for a bit, Talsgar? No obligation as to the duration, of course," she added with a grin.

"I would be honored, friend," he assured her, and Darva snatched his hand again and practically dragged him inside.

Vilkas leaned over and asked, quietly, "How do you know him?"

Ysmir gave him an incredulous look, "You've travelled the roads of Skyrim for how long and you've never met him? It felt like I was running into him all the time."

"I tend not to use roads," he reminded her with a shrug.

"Right. Well, after a few dozen times running into each other, or passing each other, or coming to the other's aid when wolves rushed out, we got snowed into the Nightgate Inn for about three or four days. We talked, we drank, we shared stories…"

"Is that all you shared?" he asked suspiciously.

Ysmir scowled a bit, "Why the keen interest in my choice of bedmates lately? No, we did not," not for his lack of trying, though. Unfortunately for Talsgar, Ysmir only had the overwhelming urge for intimacy after battling dragons, although with some, like Odahviing or Paarthurnax, it was curbed by actually being able to speak with them.

Farkas stuck his head around the side of the house, saw them, and approached. "Darva just dragged a strange man into the house and started showing him around. She said he was the new bard."

"He _a_ bard, but he's not _our_ bard," Ysmir said, breaking her staring contest with the other twin. She grinned at the friendlier one, "Actually, he's an old friend of mine, and has a rather nice voice. It'll be nice to hear him sing again."

* * *

_"And so the Tongues freed us from Alduin's rage. Gave the gift of the Voice, ushered in a new Age. If Alduin is eternal then eternity's done. For his story is over and the dragons are... gone,"_ Talsgar finished with a flourish of strings. The children applauded wildly, for the last bard had been…not so good as their mother's old friend. "Thank you! Thank you kindly," he said, bowing courteously to his audience.

"It's a shame he can't stay," Lydia observed wistfully, her chin propped on her hand. "That was wonderful," she told the bard as he came to get a drink.

He flashed her a grin that made Ysmir hope he drank enough to pass right out tonight rather than try anything with her housecarl, especially as their beds were in the same room. "When did you get instruments?" she asked, trying to distract him.

Talsgar laughed, "I only just managed to save enough to buy them! You know how I am with a good meal, my friend. I've had nothing but the plainest fair for months, but I finally managed enough."

Ysmir laughed with him, thinking of all the times she had wandered upon random drums, flutes, or lutes in bandits' nests. If she had known he wanted one he would have been outfitted long since, and with no one out of any coin (except the bandits, who were hardly in a position to need it).

Inigo broke in with a request for a comedic song from Cyrodiil about a Khajiit who fell for a blind priestess of Dibella and tried all sorts of methods of getting her attention, up to pretending to be a kitty when she found him at her window! The Nords looked confused, but Ysmir whacked him with a grilled leek, "Wait until the children are asleep before you start in on the bawdy stuff!"

"Speaking of which…" Lydia started, glancing over at the waterclock. The children all groaned, knowing what was coming. "Oh, hush. You've all been up far past your bedtime, tonight," was how the housecarl responded to their grousing. Ysmir rose and the two women ushered the children downstairs to the bathing room while Inigo finally got his bawdy song.

* * *

"Sky Haven Temple?" Talsgar repeated, brow furrowing as he looked down at the location on the map, "Surely I've heard of it—who hasn't heard of the return of the dragon-slaying Blades?—but why would you want me to go there?"

The two old friends were sitting before the fireplace, surrounded by cozy darkness and the quiet sounds of her family asleep. Precious had elected to lie on Talsgar's feet—which Ysmir found astonishing, since the ice wolf had been with them for several years and had yet to do more than acknowledge her presence with a cold glare or faint growl.

Ysmir gazed meditatively at the flickering glow of the coals, the sullen red and deep, intermittent darkness of the charcoal reminded of the Dremora Lords she used to summon. She took another sip of brandy before she answered, "I cannot go there myself, but I need to get a message to someone who is there."

The bard looked a bit petulant. "I'm a bard, not a courier, Ysmir."

"A courier couldn't get in. A bard might just be welcomed in," she replied. "Look, I know it's in the opposite direction than you were traveling, and is in an area surrounded by Foresworn, but I can't trust just anyone with this," she gave him a pleading look. "I wouldn't even be talking to these people if I had a choice."

Talsgar groaned, looking at her with dismay, "Not the lost puppy face."

"Please?" she asked, looking—had she but known it—just like her daughter when the child wanted something. "It won't be just a favor, either, Talsgar. I'll pay you for your trouble. I'll pay for bodyguards if you feel you need them, even."

Finally, he sighed in capitulation. "You're going to be the death of me, Dragonborn."

She handed him another bottle of mead with a grin. "But won't it make such a good song?"

.

.

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**Sorry for the lateness, but I have a good reason! As of yesterday I am officially moved into my new place! Moving sucks majorly, but the new house is so much nicer than our old apartment!**

**I always loved running into Talsgar on the road-he was my third favorite, after M'aiq and wandering bands of Thalmor. So when I decided to actually make a story of this, I knew I had to have him in here somewhere. I want to include M'aiq too, but I'm not sure how. **

**In other Skyrim news, my game crashed so hard I had to re-download it, so I went a week without Skyrim inspiration. :( In better news, I now have both Oblivion and Morrowind to play! So I'll probably be including more references to past games in later chapters. Why? Because my Muse can only do so many things at once, and they bleed into eachother like markers on wet paper. **

**As always, I hope you enjoyed the chapter! Thank you to everyone who read and commented and favorited! You give me the enthusiasm to continue. **


	10. Chapter 10: Trouble in Paradise

In the end, after hearing from Talsgar what conditions were currently like in the Reach, it was decided that Ysmir herself would go, along with the twins, to ensure the bard's safe arrival at Sky Haven Temple. The Dragonborn was reluctant, but Talsgar pointed out that it might be easier to convince Esbern to talk to her if she were relatively close by.

"I hate to be leaving them so soon," she fretted, gazing back over Jughead's rump at the house dwindling in the distance. A few tiny figures could just barely be made out watching from the nearer tower. One of them was Darva, the other was either Sofie or Lucia, judging from size.

"They'll be fine," Farkas assured her with a grin. "Lydia and Inigo are with them."

"Not to mention Aela should return from her mission within the week," Vilkas put in, gazing around alertly. "She always stops in around the little one's birthdays."

"Ysmir," Talsgar put in musingly after a few more moments of her watching the house disappear to distance and woods, "I was wondering…how did you end up with so many children? They cannot all be yours."

The twins snickered. "Ysmir has a habit of taking in strays," Farkas told the bard. "It doesn't matter what they are."

"Ah, I remember that," the older man replied, scratching the stubble appearing on his chin. "The first time I met her she was being followed around by a wild dog."

"Meeko," Ysmir supplied. "He wasn't wild, his owner had just died. I left him with Haming and his grandfather. The boy needed a friend and I just couldn't care for him at the time."

"Lucia was an orphan in Whiterun," Vil picked up the tale as if Ysmir hadn't spoken, eyes still scanning the hillsides. "Her aunt and uncle took over her dead mother's farm and tossed her out to beg on the streets. Ysmir saw her once, paid for her to stay in the inn for a week, and returned to say she had a room all set up for her in her house."

Ysmir shrugged. "What did I need with a room that big, anyway?"

"Then she solved a murder in Windhelm," Farkas continued, "and while she was there she heard of Aventus living all alone in his dead parent's house—"

"—doing nothing out of the ordinary whatsoever—"

"—and marched in there, threw him over her shoulder, and took him home!" Farkas crowed.

"I did no such thing!" Ysmir snapped, then grinned. "I merely took some time to convince him things wouldn't be so bad at the orphanage if he gave it another shot." That she had made things better at the orphanage was beyond the point.

"Of course," Vil said blandly, eyes shining as he shot her an amused look, "the first time she visited him at the orphanage, she ended up taking him home. Runa met her at the door with her bags packed and said in no uncertain terms that she did not want to stay in the orphanage a moment longer, and that she'd hire herself out as Ysmir's serving maid if she had to."

"Of course, this was seven years ago, so that was just adorable," Farkas gushed in an imitation of one of the girls when they've seen something cute. Ysmir kicked at him and he ducked.

Ysmir gave both of them a quelling glare. "You aren't even telling it right," she admonished them. "All right. First was Lucia, which you heard. Only a few months after that were the murders in Windhelm, where I heard the rumors about Aventus, and within three months he and Runa were living with me. Then I met Alesan in Dawnstar while on the way to Solitude, and basically just packed him up to come with me. We passed by a stable where Blaise was working as a stable-boy, and the two began playing. Once I learned about him, I couldn't just leave him. A little less than a year later, we were attacked by cultists from the island of Solstheim, and I headed out to Raven Rock to start to investigate. Sofie was selling flowers by the entrance to the docks from Windhelm. Her father died in the war. I couldn't get her out of my mind when I was in Raven Rock, and so when I returned I took her home with me." That about summed it up, but Talsgar was looking at her with disappointed disbelief for her lack of storytelling skills.

"And when she got home," Farkas said with a laugh, "Lydia begged her no more! Even with Vil and I coming out to help, and Inigo assisting, it was too much to handle without Ysmir there."

"So I agreed not to bring home any more children—"

"—only to find out she was pregnant!" Farkas finished, laughing.

"But all the children really put effort into being good after Darva was born," Ysmir said, ignoring the penetrating look Vilkas was giving her, as if he had just realized something. "They all grew up a little, when they got a baby sister."

"But of course now they're all bringing home pets," Farkas chuckled, and regaled Talsgar with all the strange things that had been in the house over the years, from Precious the cranky ice wolf to a mudcrab named Butter that had disappeared into the lake.

"Ysmir," Vil said quietly from her stirrup under his brother's chatter, and she glanced down in surprise. His black-ringed eyes were gazing at her keenly, "Darva's father…is he from Raven Rock?"

"No," she replied, looking forward. It wasn't a lie, either. She doubted Raven Rock had been established when Miraak was walking about.

The werewolf scowled, "But he's from the island?" he persisted.

She sighed, "He was…I met him while on the island, yes. I can't say if that's truly where he was from." For one thing, the island hadn't existed until Miraak opposed the dragon rule.

"Why don't you want to talk about this?" he asked.

"Why do you? I messed up and wound up pregnant—not that I regret it. That's all there is to it," as far as he was concerned, anyway.

"You don't…" Vil broke off, heaving a sigh in exasperation that let her know she'd won, for the moment.

Thankfully, by the end of the day they were at the borders of the Reach, and between Foresworn and frostbite spiders, they had their hands full. It took the better part of a week to reach their camp spot, chosen carefully near but not-too-near Sky Haven Temple. Talsgar set out just after dinner on Jughead so that he would reach the temple only a little after dark, as if he were lost and had seen the lights.

Of course, as soon as he was gone, Vilkas descended.

Farkas headed out to get firewood after a tense conversation Ysmir pretended not to notice as she rolled out sleeping rolls. When Talsgar was with them, they slept in separate ones, but now she simply piled them into one big one—it was much warmer that way, and she wasn't a cold-resistant Nord like the twins were. Since it looked like it might rain, she hooked the top of the tent cloth over a low pine branch, staking down the corners. She was inside fixing the back top corner when he snuck up behind her.

He trapped her between his chest and the tree, hands roving with a purpose that took her a bit off-guard coming from Vilkas. She responded immediately, trying to turn, but he shoved her back against the tree roughly, growling under his breath. What little she could see proved his eyes were glowing. Ysmir gasped, a little excited despite the slight sense of outrage she felt. The werewolf didn't bother fully undressing her, simply removing what needed to be moved before spinning her around and taking her against the tree, his hands and lips rougher and more possessive than she could ever remember them being before. She clung to him, legs wrapped tightly around his waist as she gasped, nails digging into his back.

Abruptly he slowed, lifting his glowing eyes to meet hers. "Who is he?" he asked, thrusting once, hard, to the question.

"What?" she managed, dazed.

"Darva's father. Who. Is. He?"

She groaned, feeling as if he were torturing her. "Really, Vilkas? _Now?"_

He stopped, holding her captured, unfulfilled and unable to move against the rough tree bark. "Who is it, Ysmir?" he demanded.

"Why does it matter to you?" she challenged, beginning to get angry.

"Because it matters to you," he yelled, surprising her again. Vil usually had a better reign on his temper. "I can see it in your eyes."

"Let it go, Vil," she pleaded, resting her head against the tree and gazing up into the branches. It had begun to rain, and drops had been falling on her for some time. She hadn't noticed until this point.

Vil took a step back, drawing out of her and letting her down, still gazing at her with that angry granite mask. Curtly, he turned and walked out of the tent and into the woods. There was a moment of silence, then a heart-stopping howl rent the air, nearly drowned out by a peal of thunder. She hoped the Blades couldn't hear that, or they would come looking.

Ysmir sank down on the sleeping rolls, aroused, bereft, and no little bit angry. She didn't want to think about Miraak. There was no place in her life, in her children's life, for the new Daedra, so why did it matter? And…she didn't want them to know. She didn't want to talk about it, to admit to it, to admit that…

She sighed with frustration, falling back on the furs and concentrating on being annoyed at her lover.

"I thought he might have left you like this," Farkas commented, joining her. She glanced at him, letting him see her irritation, and he smiled, hand stroking her thigh very gently. Ysmir was so hyped up she mewed involuntarily. "Don't worry," he said, pulling her gently to him—despite everything, Farkas was always gentle—"I won't leave you like that…"

* * *

Vilkas returned sometime in the night, for Ysmir woke to find him in his usual spot, tucked in beside her, opposite his brother. The pair of them were both cover hogs, which resulted, ironically enough, in perfect coverage as they each tugged on opposite sides of a blanket. His chest was against her back, leg between hers, while Farkas had a leg thrown over both of them, and an arm around her shoulder. Ysmir snuggled deeper under the covers and went back to sleep.

He was gone at breakfast.

"He has a lot to think on right now," Farkas told her when she expressed her irritation, shoveling horker stew left over from the night before in his mouth. "And he doesn't like it when people keep secrets."

"Well, sometimes 'people' just don't want to talk about some things," Ysmir groused, running a hand through her hair. One of the girls had apparently "borrowed" her brush from her travel pack, so she had no other way of combing it, which added to her irritation. She wondered briefly if she should start wearing it short again.

"He hasn't told you yet, has he?" the Companion asked abruptly, watching her for a long moment.

She glanced at him, taken aback, "Told me what?"

"Before that last mission with all the bandits, Kodlak had a meeting with him. Seems the old man is thinking of setting Vil up to be the next Harbinger."

Ysmir stared at him, coming to sit slowly beside him. "But that's wonderful. I know it's something he wants, so why is he acting so, so…"

"He won't be around as much, Ysmir," Farkas pointed out with a shrug. "He loves those children, and you in his own way, and even Lydia and Inigo and the kitten. He'll have to spend most of his time in Jorrvaskr, and leave you all behind."

Ysmir softened, glancing off in the direction Vil had gone the night before. "What does this have to do with Darva's father?"

"Don't you see? If you decide that you truly do care for this man—one you've had a child with, and marriage has been based on less in Skyrim—he won't have any claim on them whatsoever. If this man doesn't like Vil, or want him around, there is nothing he can do about it. What I really think, Ysmir, is that Vil is scared of losing you and the children. He'd probably put on an Amulet of Mara for you himself if he thought it would really help rather than sending you running in the other direction."

Ysmir felt her mouth drop open and closed it with a snap. "I would never deny Vil—or you—access to the children. They love you. Even if I—for some unfathomable reason—decided to marry, it wouldn't be to someone who couldn't handle the fact that my children already have two werewolf fathers."

"And a dragon grandfather, and another dragon uncle," Farkas continued with a smile, but Ysmir could tell she had put him at ease. He rose, carrying his bowl and spoon toward the little rivulet of water, too small to be called a stream, that they had camped beside.

"Farkas…" he paused, glancing back at her with a neutral expression, "I…" she hesitated, then took a deep breath. "I promise, I will eventually tell you two who Darva's father is, but for right now? Let's just enjoy what we have."

"Sounds like a plan," the Companion replied with a smile.


End file.
